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CANADA 

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

BEING THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE 

NEW DOMINION'S GROWTH FROM 

COLONY TO KINGDOM 



BY 



AGNES C. LAUT 

AUTHOR OF "the CONQUEST OF THE GREAT NORTH-WEST' 
"lords of the NORTH," ETC. 



BOSTON AND LONDON 

GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

1909 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY AGNES C. LAUT 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

49.8 



24 83 68' 



^ 



IRiti: atlienaum jgregg 

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

To re-create the shadowy figures of the heroic past, to clothe 
the dead once more in flesh and blood, to set the puppets of the 
play in life's great dramas again upon the stage of action, — 
frankly, this may not be formal history, but it is what makes the 
past most real to the present day. Pictures of men and women, 
of moving throngs and heroic episodes, stick faster in the mind 
than lists of governors and arguments on treaties. Such pic- 
tures may not be history, but they breathe life into the skeletons 
of the past. 

Canada's past is more dramatic than any romance ever penned. 
The story of that past has been told many times and in many 
volumes, with far digressions on Louisiana and New England 
and the kingcraft of Europe. The trouble is, the story has not 
been told in one volume. Too much has been attempted. To 
include the story of New England wars and Louisiana's pioneer 
days, the story of Canada itself has been either cramped or 
crowded. To the eastern writer, Canada's history has been the 
record of French and English conflict. To him there has been 
practically no Canada west of the Great Lakes ; and in order 
to tell the intrigue of European tricksters, very often the writer 
has been compelled to exclude the story of the Canadian peo- 
ple, — meaning by people the breadwinners, the toilers, rather 
than the governing classes. Similarly, to the western writer, 
Canada meant the Hudson's Bay Company. As for the Pacific 
■coast, it has been almost ignored in any story of Canada. 

Needless to say, a complete history of a country as vast as 
Canada, whose past in every section fairly teems with action, 
could not be crowded into one volume. To give even the story 



iv CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

of Canada's most prominent episodes and actors is a matter of 
rigidly excluding the extraneous. 

All that has been attempted here is such a story — story, 
not history — of the romance and adventure in Canada's nation 
building as will give the casual reader knowledge of the coun- 
try's past, and how that past led along a trail of great heroism 
to the destiny of a Northern Empire. This volume is in no 
sense formal history. There will be found in it no such lists of 
governors with dates appended, of treaties with articles running 
to the fours and eights and tens, of battles grouped with dates, 
as have made Canadian history a nightmare to children. 

It is only such a story as boys and girls may read, or the 
hurried business man on the train, who wants to know " what 
was doing " in the past ; and it is mainly a story of men and 
women and things doing. 

I have not given at the end of each chapter the list of author- 
ities customary in formal history. At the same time it is hardly 
necessary to say I have dug most rigorously down to original 
sources for facts ; and of secondary authorities, from Pie?Te 
Boucher, his Book, to modern reprints of Chajiiplain and L Es- 
carbot, there are not any I have not consulted more or less. 
Especially am I indebted to the Documentary History of Nezv 
York, sixteen volumes, bearing on early border wars ; to Docu- 
mcjits Rclatifs a la Nouvclle France, Quebec ; to the Canadian 
Archives since 1886 ; to the special historical issues of each of 
the eastern provinces ; and to the monumental works of Dr. 
Kingsford. Nearly all the places described are from frequent 
visits or from living on the spot. 



INTRODUCTION 

"The Twentieth century belongs to Canada." 

The prediction of Sir Wilfrid Laiirier, Premier of the Dominion, 
seems likely to have bigger fulfillment than Canadians themselves 
realize. What does it mean ? 

Canada stands at the same place in the world's history as 
England stood in the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth — on the 
threshold of her future as a great nation. Her population is 
the same, about seven million. Her mental attitude is similar, 
that of a great awakening, a consciousness of new strength, an 
exuberance of energy biting on the bit to run the race ; mel- 
lowed memory of hard-won battles against tremendous odds in 
the past ; for the future, a golden vision opening on vistas too 
far to follow. They dreamed pretty big in the days of Queen 
Elizabeth, but they did n't dream big enough for what was to 
come ; and they are dreaming pretty big up in Canada to-day, 
but it is hard to forecast the future when a nation the size of 
all Europe is setting out on the career of her world history. 

To put it differently : Canada's position is very much the 
same to-day as the United States' a century ago. Her popula- 
tion is about seven million. The population of the United States 
was seven million in 1810. One was a strip of isolated settle- 
ments north and south along the Atlantic seaboard ; the other, 
a string of provinces east and west along the waterways that 
ramify from the St. Lawrence. Both possessed and were flanked 
by vast unexploited territory the size of Russia ; the United 
States by a Louisiana, Canada by the Great Northwest. What 
the Civil War did for the United States, Confederation did for 
the Canadian provinces — welded them into a nation. The par- 
allel need not be carried farther. If the same development 



vi CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

follows Confederation in Canada as followed the Civil War in 
the United States, the twentieth century will witness the birth 
and growth of a world power. 

To no one has the future opening before Canada come as a 
greater surprise than to Canadians themselves. A few years 
ago such a claim as the Premier's would have been regarded as 
the effusions of the after-dinner speaker. While Canadian poli- 
ticians were hoping for the honor of being accorded colonial 
place in the English Parliament, they suddenly awakened to find 
themselves a nation. They suddenly realized that history, and 
big history, too, was in the making. Instead of Canada being 
dependent on the Empire, the Empire's most far-seeing states- 
men were looking to Canada for the strength of the British 
Empire. No longer is there a desire among Canadians for place 
in the Parliament at Westminster. With a new empire of their 
own to develop, equal in size to the whole of Europe, Canadian 
public men realize they have enough to do without taking a hand 
in European affairs. 

As the different Canadian provinces came into Confederation 
they were like beads on a string a thousand miles apart. First 
were the Maritime Provinces, with western bounds touching the 
eastern bounds of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of 
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island 
separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles 
of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated Quebec 
from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English, 
aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thou- 
sand miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between On- 
tario and the scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. Not 
an interest was in common between the little province of the mid- 
dle west and her sisters to the east. Then prairie land came for 
a thousand miles, and mountains for six hundred miles, before 
reaching the Pacific province of British Columbia, more com- 
pletely cut off from other parts of Canada than from Mexico or 
Panama. In fact, it would have been easier for British Columbia 
to trade with Mexico and Panama than with the rest of Canada. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

To bind these far-separated patches of settlement, oases in a 
desert of wilds, into a nation was the object of the union known 
as Confederation. But a nation can live only as it trades what 
it draws from the soil. Naturally, the isolated provinces looked 
for trade to the United States, just across an invisible boundary. 
It seemed absurd that the Canadian provinces should try to 
trade with each other, a thousand miles apart, rather than with 
the United States, a stone's throw from the door of each prov- 
ince. But the United States erected a tariff wall that Canada 
could not climb. The struggling Dominion was thrown solely 
on herself, and set about the giant task of linking the provinces 
together, building railroads from Atlantic to Pacific, canals from 
tide water to the Great Lakes. In actual cash this cost Canada 
four hundred million dollars, not counting land grants and pri- 
vate subscriptions for stock, which would bring up the cost of 
binding the provinces together to a billion. This was a stagger- 
ing burden for a country with smaller population than Greater 
New York — a burden as big as Japan and Russia assumed for 
their war ; but, like war, the expenditure was a fight for national 
existence. Without the railroads and canals, the provinces could 
not have been bound together into a nation. 

These were Canada's pioneer days, when she was spending 
more than she was earning, when she bound herself down to 
grinding poverty and big risks and hard tasks. It was a long 
pull, and a hard pull ; but it was a pull altogether. That was 
Canada's seed time ; this is her harvest. That was her night 
work, when she toiled, while other nations slept ; now is the 
awakening, when the world sees what she was doing. Railroad 
man, far4ner, miner, manufacturer, all had the same struggle, 
the big outlay of labor and money at first, the big risk and no 
profit, the long period of waiting. 

Canada was laying her foundations of yesterday for the 
superstructure of prosperity to-day and to-morrow — the New 
Empire. 

When one surveys the c(nmtry as a whole, the facts are so 
big they are bewildering. 



viii CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

In the first place, the area of the Dominion is within a few 
thousand miles of as large as all Europe. To be more specific, 
you could spread the surface of Italy and Spain and Turkey 
and Greece and Austria over eastern Canada, and you would 
still have an area uncovered in the east alone bigger than the 
German Empire. England spread flat on the surface of Eastern 
Canada would just serve to cover the Maritime Provinces nicely, 
leaving uncovered Quebec, which is a third bigger than Ger- 
many ; Ontario, which is bigger than France ; and Labrador 
(Ungava), which is about the size of Austria. 

In the west you could spread the British Isles out flat, 
and you would not cover Manitoba — with her new bound- 
aries extending to Hudson Bay. It would take a country the 
size of France to cover the province of Saskatchewan, a country 
larger than Germany to cover Alberta, two countries the size of 
Germany to cover British Columbia and the Yukon, and there 
would still be left uncovered the northern half of the West — 
an area the size of European Russia. 

No Old World monarch from William the Conqueror to Na- 
poleon could boast of such a realm. People are fond of tracing 
ancestry back to feudal barons of the Middle Ages. What feu- 
dal baron of the Middle Ages, or Lord of the Outer Marches, 
was heir to such heritage as Canada may claim ? Think of it ! 
Combine all the feudatory domains of the Rhine and the Danube, 
you have not so vast an estate as a single western province. Or 
gather up all the estates of England's midland counties and 
eastern shires and borderlands, you have not enough land to 
fill one of Canada's inland seas, — Lake Superior. 

If there were a population in eastern Canada equal to France, — 
and Quebec alone would support a population equal to P" ranee, — 
and in Manitoba equal to the British Isles, and in Saskatchewan 
equal to France, and in Alberta equal to Germany, and in British 
Columbia equal to Germany, — ignoring Yukon, Mackenzie River, 
Keewatin, and Labrador, taking only those parts of Canada where 
climate has been tested and lands surveyed, — Canada would 
support two hundred million people. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

The figures are staggering, but they are not half so improba- 
ble as the actual facts of what has taken place in the United 
States. America's population was acquired against hard odds. 
There were no railroads when the movement to America began. 
The only ocean goers were sailboats of slow progress and great 
discomfort. In Europe was profound ignorance regarding Amer- 
ica ; to-day all is changed. Canada begins where the United 
States left off. The whole world is gridironed with railroads. 
Fast Atlantic liners offer greater comfort to the emigrant than 
he has known at home. Ignorance of America has given place 
to almost romantic glamour. Just when the free lands of the 
United States are exhausted and the government is putting up 
bars to keep out the immigrant, Canada is in a position to open 
her doors wide. Less than a fortieth of the entire West is 
inhabited. Of the Great Clay Belt of North Ontario only a 
patch on the southern edge is populated. The same may be said 
of the Great Forest Belt of Quebec. These facts are the mag- 
net that will attract the immigrant to Canada. The United 
States wants no more immigrants. 

And the movement to Canada has begun. To her shores are 
thronging the hosts of the Old World's dispossessed, in mul- 
titudes greater than any army that ever marched to conquest 
under Napoleon. When the history of America comes to be 
written in a hundred years, it will not be the record of a slaughter 
field with contending nations battling for the mastery, or gen- 
erals wading to glory knee-deep in blood. It will be an account 
of the most wonderful race movement, the most wonderful 
experiment in democracy the world has known. 

The people thronging to Canada for homes, who are to be 
her nation builders, are people crowded out of their home lands, 
who had n't room for the shoulder swing manhood and woman- 
hood need to carve out honorable careers. Look at them in the 
streets of London, or Glasgow, or Dublin, or Berlin, these emi- 
gres, as the French called their royalists, whom revolution drove 
frorn home, and I think the word emigre is a truer description 
of the newcomer to Canada than the word " emigrant." They are 



X CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

poor, they are desperately poor, so jioor that a month's ilhiess 
or a shut-down of the factory may push them from poverty to 
the abyss. They are thrifty, but can neither earn nor save enough 
to feel absolutely sure that the hollow-eyed specter of Want may 
not seize them by the throat. They are willing to work, so eager 
to work that at the docks and the factory gates they trample 
and jostle one another for the chance to work. They are the 
underpinnings, the underprops of an old system, these emigres, 
by which the masses were expected to toil for the benefit of 
the classes. 

" It 's all the average man or woman is good for," says the 
Old Order, "just a day's wage representing bodily needs." 

" Wait," says the New Order. " Give him room ! Give him 
an opportunity ! Give him a full stomach to pump blood to his 
muscles and life to his brain ! Wait and see ! If he fails then, 
let him drop to the bottom of the social pit without stop of 
poorhouse or help ! " 

A penniless immigrant boy arrives in New York. First he 
peddles peanuts, then he trades in a half-huckster way whatever 
comes to hand and earns profits. Presently he becomes a fur 
trader and invests his savings in real estate. Before that man 
dies, he has a monthly income equal to the yearly income of 
European kings. That man's name was John Jacob Astor. 

Or a young Scotch boy comes out on a sailing vessel to 
Canada. For a score of years he is an obscure clerk at a dis- 
tant trading post in Labrador. He comes out of the wilds to 
take a higher position as land commissioner. Presently he is 
backing railroad ventures of tremendous cost and tremendous 
risk. Within thirty years from the time he came out of the 
wilds penniless, that man possesses a fortune equal to the 
national income of European kingdoms. The man's name is 
Lord Strathcona. 

Or a hard-working coal miner emigrates to Canada. The man 
has brains as well as hands. Other coal miners emigrate at the 
same time, but this man is as keen as a razor in foresight and 
care. From coal miner he becomes coal manager, from manager 



INTRODUCTION XI 

operator, from operator owner, and dies worth a fortune that 
the barons of the Middle Ages would have drenched their coun- 
tries in blood to win. The man's name is James Dvmsmuir. 

Or it is a boy clerking in a departmental store. He emigrates. 
When he goes back to England it is to marry a lady in waiting 
to the Queen. He is now known as Lord Mount-Stephen. 

What was the secret of the success .'' Ability in the first 
place, but in the second, opportunity ; opportunity and room for 
shoulder swing to show what a man can do when keen ability 
and tireless energy have untrammeled freedom to do their best. 

Examples of the emigres' success could be multiplied. It is 
more than a mere material success ; it is eternal proof that, given 
a fair chance and a square deal and shoulder swing, the boy born 
penniless can run the race and outstrip the boy born to power. 

"Have you, then, no menial classes in Canada.?" asked a 
member of the Old Order. 

" No, I 'm thankful to say," said I. 

" Then zvho does the work 1 " 

" The workers." 

" But what 's the difference .? " 

"Just this : your menial of the Old Country is the child of a 
menial, whose father before him was a menial, whose ancestors 
were in servile positions to other people back as far as you like 
to go, — to the time when men were serfs wearing an iron collar 
with the brand of the lord who owned them. With us no stigma 
is attached to work. ]\vn- menial expects to be a menial all his 
life. With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, 
if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a com- 
petency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his 
own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as 
he once was himself." 

" Then you have no social classes ? " 

" Lots. The ///>s, who have succeeded ; and the Juxlficay nps, 
who are succeeding ; and the beginners, who are going to suc- 
ceed ; and the dmvns, who never try. And as success does n't 
necessarily mean money, but doing the best at whatever one tries, 



xii CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

you can see that the nps and the Jialfivay 7ip», and the beginners 
and the dozvns have each their own classes of special workers." 

"That," she answered, "is not democracy; it is revolution." 
She was thinking of those Old World hard-and-fast divisions of 
society into royalty, aristocracy, commons, peasantry. 

"It is not revolution," I explained. "It is rebirth! When 
you send your emigre owX. to us, he is a made-over man." 

But it is not given to all emigres to become great capitalists 
or great leaders. Some who have the opportunity have not the 
ability, and the majority would not, for all the rewards that great- 
ness offers, choose careers that entail long years of nerve-wrack- 
ing, unflagging labor. But on a minor scale the same process 
of making over takes place. One case will illustrate. 

Some years before immigration to Canada had become gen- 
eral, two or three hundred Icelanders were landed in Winnipeg 
destitute. From some reason, which I have forgotten, — prob- 
ably the quarantine of an immigrant, — the Icelanders could not 
be housed in the government immigration hall. They were abso- 
lutely without money, household goods, property of any sort 
except clothing, and that was scant, the men having but one 
suit of the poorest clothes, the women thin homespun dresses 
so worn one could see many of them had no underwear. The 
people represented the very dregs of poverty. Withdrawing to 
the vacant lots in the west end of Winnipeg, — at that time a 
mere town, — the newcomers slept for the first nights, herded in 
the rooms of an Icelander opulent enough to have rented a 
house. Those who could not gain admittance to this house 
slept under the high board sidewalks, then a feature of the new 
town. I remember as a child watching them sit on the high 
sidewalk till it was dark, then roll under. Fortunately it was 
summer, but it was useless for people in this condition to go 
bare to the prairie farm. To make land yield, you must have 
house and barns and stock and implements, and I doubt if these 
people had as much as a jackknifc. I remember how two or 
three of the older women used t(j sit crying each night in 
despair till they disappeared in the crowded house, fourteen or 



INTRODUCTION Xlii 

twenty of them to a room. Within a week, the men were all at 
work, sawing wood from door to door at a dollar and a half a 
cord, the women out by the day washing at a dollar a day. 
Within a month they had earned enough to buy lumber and tar 
paper. Tar-papered shanties went up like mushrooms on the 
vacant lots. Before winter each family had bought a cow and 
chickens. I shall not betray confidence by telling where the cow 
and chickens slept. Those immigrants were not desirable neigh- 
bors. Other people moved hastily away from the region. Such 
a condition would not be tolerated now, when there are spacious 
immigration halls and sanitary inspectors to see that cows and 
people do not house under the same roof. What with work and 
peddling milk, by spring the people were able to move out on 
the free prairie farms. To-day those Icelanders own farms clear 
of debt, own stock that would be considered the possession of a 
capitalist in Iceland, and have money in the savings banks. 
Their sons and daughters have had university educations and 
have entered every avenue of life, farming, trading, practicing 
medicine, actually teaching English in English schools. Some 
are members of Parliament. It was a hard beginning, but it was 
a rebirth to a new life. They are now among the nation builders 
of the West. 

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Canada's nation 
builders consisted entirely of poor people. The race movement 
has not been a leaderless mob. Princes, nobles, adventurers, 
soldiers of fortune, were the pathfinders who blazed the trail to 
Canada. Glory, pure and simple, was the aim that lured the 
first comers across the trackless seas. Adventurous young aris- 
tocrats, members of the Old Order, led the first nation builders 
to America, and, all unconscious of destiny, laid the foundations 
of the New Order. The story of their adventures and work is 
the history of Canada. 

It is a new experience in the world's history, this race move- 
ment that has built up the United States and is now building 
up Canada. Other great race movements have been a tearing 
down of high places, the upward scramble of one class on the 



XIV 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



backs of the deposed class. Instead of leveling down, Canada's 
nation building is leveling up. 

This, then, is the empire — the size of all the nations in 
Europe, bigger than Napoleon's wildest dreams of conquest — 
to which Canada has awakened.^ 



1 Comparative Statement ok Areas of Canada and Europe 

Europe . 



England . 

Germany 

France 

Italy . . 

Spain . . 

Austria and Hungary 

Russia in Europe 



3,797,410 square miles 

Square Miles 
50,867 
208,830 



204,000 
I T 0,000 
197,000 
241,000 
2,000,000 



Canada . . . 3,750,000 square miles 
Maritime Provinces Square Miles 

Nova Scotia 20,600 

Prince Edward Island . . 2,000 

New Brunswick .... 28,200 

50,800 

Quebec 347.35° 

Ontario 222,000 

Manitoba 

Saskatchewan 204,000 

Alberta 350,000 

British Columbia 383,000 

Unorganized Territory of 

Keewatin 756,000 

Yukon 200,000 

MacKenzie River and Un- 

gava 1 ,000,000 



Comparative Statement ok Population in Canada and the 
United States 

United States Canada 

In 1800 . . . 5,000,000 In 18S1 . . . 4,300,000 

"1810 . . . 7,000,000 " 1891 . . . 5,000,000 

" 1820 . . . 9,600,000 " 1901 • • • 5'5o°'°°° 

" 1830 . . . 12,800,000 " 1906 . . . 6,500,000 

It will be noticed that for twenty years Canada's population becomes almost 
stagnant. The reason for this will be found as the story of Canada is related. 
If she keeps up the increase at the pace she has now set, or at the rate the 
United States' population went ahead during the same period of industrial devel- 
opment, the results can be forecast from the following table : 

United States in 1840 17,000,000 

" " '- 1850 23,000,000 

" "■ " i860 31,000,000 

" " " 1S70 38,000,000 

" " " 1880 50,000,000 

" " " 1890 63,000,000 

" " " 1900 85,000,000 



INTRODUCTION XV 

A few years ago, when talking to a leading editor of Canada, I chanced to 
say that I did not think Canadians had at that time awakened to their future. 
The editor answered that he was afraid I had contracted the American disease 
of "bounce" through living in the United States; to which I retorted that if 
Canadians could catch the same disease and accomplish as much by it in the twen- 
tieth century as Americans had in the nineteenth, it would be a good thing for the 
country. It is wonderful to have witnessed the complete face-about of Canadian 
public opinion in the short space of six years, this editor shouting as loud as any 
of his exuberant brethren. Still, as the outlook in Canadian affairs may be regarded 
as flamboyant, it is worth while quoting the comment of the most critical and con- 
servative newspaper in the world, — the London Times. The Times sSiys : "With- 
out doubt the expansion of Canada is the greatest political event in the British 
Empire to-day. The empire is face to face with development which makes it 
impossible for indefinite maintenance of the present constitutional arrangements." 

Regarding the Iceland immigrants, to whom reference is made, I recently 
met in London a famed traveler, who was in Iceland when the people were set- 
ting out for Canada, Mrs. Alec. Tweedie. She explains in her book how these 
people were absolutely poverty-stricken when they left Iceland. In fact, the suf- 
ferings endured the first year in Winnipeg were mild compared to their privations 
in Iceland before they sailed. 

The explanations of Canada's hard times from Confederation to 189S — say 
from 1871, when all the provinces had really gone into Confederation, to 1897, 
when the Yukon boom poured gold into the country — can be figured out. Of a 
population of 3,000,000, four fifths need not be counted as taxpayers, as they 
include women, children, clerks, farmers' help, domestic help, — classes who pay 
no taxes but the indirect duty on clothes they wear and food they eat. This prac- 
tically means that the billion-dollar burden of making the ideal of Confederation 
into a reality by building railroads and canals was borne by 600,000 people, which 
means again a large cjuota per man to the public treasury. People forget that you 
can't take more out of the public treasury than you put into it, that it is n't like 
an artesian well, self-supplied, and the truth is, at this period Canadians were pay- 
ing more into the public treasury than they could afford, — more than the invest- 
ment was bringing them in. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEt 






I. 


From 


lOOO 


II. 


P^RO.M 


1600 


III. 


From 


1607 


IV. 


P"rom 


163s 


V. 


From 


1635 


VI. 


From 


1650 


VII. 


From 


1672 


VIII. 


From 


1679 


IX. 


From 


1686 


X. 


From 


1698 


XL 


From 


1713 


XII. 


From 


1756 


XIII. 


From 


1763 


XIV. 


FROi\r 


1812 


XV. 


From 


1813 


XVI. 


From 


1820 


INDEX . 





Pac;e 

TO 1 600 I 

TO 1607 23 

TO 1635 41 

TO 1666 61 

TO 1650 71 

TO 1672 94 

TO 1688 117 

TO 1713 143 

TO 1698 l6l 

TO 1 7 13 189 

TO 1755 ~°S 

TO 1763 241 

TO 18 1 2 276 

TO 1820 318 

TO 1846 380 

TO 1867 410 

439 



ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 

Page 

Map of Western Canada /■'ron/ispiece 

A'iKiNG Ship recextlv Discovered 2 

After a photograph of the \'iking Ship at Sandefjord, Norway. 

Map showing Division of the New World between Spain and 

Portugal 3 

A TvpiCAL "Hole in the Wall" at ■■ Kittv \'iddv."' near 

St. John's, Newfocndlaxd 4 

From a photograph. 

Sebastian Cabot 5 

After the portrait attributed to Holbein. 

Jacques Cartier 8 

After the portrait at St. Male, France, with signature. 

Where the Fisher Hamlets now nestle, Newfoundland . . 9 

From a photograph. 

Ancient Hochelaga 15 

After a cut in the third volume of Kamusio's Raitol/a, \'enice, 15^^)5. 

The "Dauphin Map" of Canada, circa 1543. showing Cartier's 

Discoveries 21 

Queen Elizabeth 25 

After the ermine portrait in Hatfield House, with signature. 

The Boyhood of Gilbert and Ralei(;h 26 

From the painting by Sir John Millais. 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert 27 

After the print in Holland's Hcnvo/ogia-Aiig/ica, 1620. 

Sir Walter Raleigh ~9 

After the portrait in the possession of the Duchess of Dorset. 

At Eastern Entrance to Hudson Straits 31 

From a photograph by Dominion (ieological Survey. 

Hudson Coat of Arms 32 

From Lenox Collection, New York City. 

The Fantastic Rocks of Gaspe 33 

From a photograph. 

xix 



XX CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Pai.e 

Samuel de Champlain 34. 

After the Moncornet portrait, with signature. 

Port Royal or Axxapolis Basix, 1609 36 

From Lescarbot's map. 

BuiLDixGS OX Ste. Crolx Islaxd 38 

From Lcs Voyages dii Sieiir dc Champlain^ Paris, 16 ij. 

Port Royal 43 

From the same. 

Tadoussac • 45 

From the same. 

Defeat of the Iroquols 47 

From the same. 

The Oxoxdaga Fort 55 

From the same. 

View of Quebec 56 

From the same. 

Quebec 59 

F"rom the same. 

Sir William Alexaxder 62 

After an engraved portrait by Marshall. 

Map showixg La Tour's Pos.ses-sioxs ix Acadia 64 

Cardixal Richelieu 66 

After the portrait by Philippe de Champaigne 

Map OF Annapolis Basix 69 

Madame de la Peltrie 73 

After a picture in the Ursuline Convent, Quebec. 

Pierre le Jeuxe So 

From an engraving in W'insor's America, after an old print. 

Georgian Bay 84 

From a photograph by A. (i. Alexander. 

Brebeuf 89 

From a bust in silver at Quebec. 

Remnants of Walls of Fort St. Mary on Christian Island in 

1 89 1 91 

After a photograph reproduced in Ontario Hisioriial Society Papers and Rccoiih. 

Map OF THE Great Lakes, showing the Territory of the Jesuit 

Huron Missions 92 

Bellin's map, 1744. 

A Canadian on Snowshoes 96 

From La Potherie's Hist aire de /'.Inieriqne Septentrioiia/e, Paris, 1753. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xxi 

Page 

Bauson's Map, 1656 99 

Title-page — Jesuit Relation ok 1662-1663 iii 

The Jesuit Map of Lake Superior 112 

From the Relation of 1670-167 1. 

Charles II 114 

After the miniature portrait by Cooper, with signature. 

Flax of Montreal i\ 1672 119 

From Qmbcc Historual Society Pa/cis and Records. 

La Salle's House near Montreal 120 

From a photograph. 

Kitchen, Chateau de Ramezav. Montkeai 120 

From a photograph. 

Laval 122 

After the portrait in Laval University, Quebec. 

A Map in the Relatio.n of 1662-1663 126 

Galinee's Map of the Great Lakes, 1669 129 

ROHERT DE LA SaLLE 1 35 

■After an engraved portrait said to be preserved in the Bibliotliiijiie de Rouen, 
with signature. 

Old Plan of Fort Frontenac 136 

From Memoirs sttr Ic Canada, Quebec, 1S73. 

The Building of the Griffon 138 

From Father Hennepin's Nouvelle Dccoiiverte, Amsterdam, 1704. 

Prince Rupert 145 

After the painting by Sir P. Lely. 

Map of Hudson Bay 147 

Contemporary French Map of Hudson Bay and \'iciNrrY . .155 

From La Potherie's Hisloirc de P Aiueriqne Se/'/eutrionale. 

Le Moyne D'Iherville 157 

After a portrait in Margry's Dccoiaertes Etaldisseinen/.y. 

Fort Frontenac and the Adjacent Country 164 

From T/ic London .\fagazine, 175S. 

WiLLiA.M OF Orange i66 

After the portrait by Sir (iodfrey Kneller, with signature. 

Quebec, i68g 172 

From La Potherie's Histoire de I'. line)'ii/ne Septenfrionaie. 

French Soldier of the Period 174 

After a cut in Massachnsetts .\rehivcs, Documents collected in France, i i i, ;. 

Sir William Phips 176 

After an accepted likeness reproduced in W'insor's America. 



xxii CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Paoe 

Count Frontenac 178 

From the statue by Hebert at Quebec. 

Castle St. Louis 180 

After a cut in Hawkins" Futures of Quebec, Quebec, 1834. 

Attack ox Quebec, i6go i8i 

From La Hontan's Mcmoircs, 1709. 

Castle St. Louls, Quebec 183 

From Suite's Canadiens Frani^ais, viii. 

Plan of Quebec , 184 

From Franquelin, i6Sj. 

Landing of Iberville's Men at Port Nelson 186 

From La Fotherie's Histoirc dc V Aiti'criquc Septeiity'wuale. 

Capture of Fort Nelson by the French 187 

From the same. 

Contemporary Map, 1689 191 

From La Hontan. 

Hertel de Rouville 193 

After a portrait in Daniel's Nos Gloircs Natioualcs. 

Contemporary Plan of Port Royal Basin 199 

From Bellin's map, 1744. 

Paul Mascarene 201 

After a portrait in Savary's edition of Calnek's Auud/olis. 

La Verendrye's Forts and the River of the West .... 207 

After JeiTery's map, 1762, 

Map published in Paris in 1752 showinc; the Supposed Sea of 

the West 209 

From the Meiitohc presented to the Academy of Sciences at Paris by Buachc, 
August, 1752. 

Map showing the Supposed Sea of the West, with Approaches 

to the Mississippi and Great Lakes, Paris, 1755 . . . .211 

From the same. 

William Pepperrell 217 

After the portrait by Smibert. 

Ruins of the Fortifications at Louisburg 219 

From a recent photograph. 

Contemporary Plan of the Attack on Louisbukg 221 

After a plan reproduced in Winsor's America. 

Fort Halifax, 1755 (Restoration) 222 

Contemporary View of Oswego 223 

From Smith's History of tlw Provitice of New Wwk. 

Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia 225 

After a portrait by Ramsay. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xxiii 

Page 

Title-Page of Washington's Journal 227 

A Sketch of the Field of Battle at Braddock's Defeat . . 229 

From a contemporary manuscript in the Library of Harvard University. 

Plan of Fort Beausejour 230 

From M ante's History of t lie I. ate War i/i A'ort/i .li/urha. 

General Monckton 232 

After a mezzotint in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society. 

General John Winslow 234 

After the portrait in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

Map of Acadia and the Adjacent Islands, 1755 237 

Sir William Johnson . 238 

After the portrait by Adams. 

Map of the Region of Lake George 239 

From Dflcumoitary History oj Xcxv York. 

Ruins of Chateau Bigot 245 

From a photograph by Captain Wurtelle. 

Parliament Buildings, Ottawa 246 

From a photograph. 

Quebec. Chateau Frontenac and the Citadel 246 

From a photograph. 
The Earl of Loudon 249 

After the portrait by Ramsay. 

Boscawen 253 

After the portrait by Reynolds. 

The Siege of Louisburg, 1758 255 

From a picture in the Lenox Collection, New York Public Library. 

Amherst 257 

After the portrait by Reynolds. 

The Country round TicoNOEROfiA 259 

From Documentary History of New York. 

General James Wolfe 261 

After the engraved portrait bv Iloustin. 

Bougainville 263 

After a cut in ISounechose's Moiiteahn. 

Till: Site of Quebec and the Ground occupied during tiii: 

Siege of 1759 -'^5 

After a plan in TIic Universal Mai;aziiH\ London, December, 1S59. 

LotTis Joseph, Marotus de Montcalm 26S 

After the portrait in the possession of his descendants. 

Di:ath of Wolfe 272 

From the painting by West. 



xxiv CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Pacie 

Major Robert Rogers 277 

After a mezzotint by an unknown engraver. Published in London, October i, 1776 

North America at the close of the Frenxh Wars, 1763 . . 27S 
General Murray, First Governor of Quebec 280 

After the portrait by Ramsay. 

Settle.ments on the Detroit River 283 

I'rom Parkman's Ciws/inrty of Pontiac. 

Bouquet 289 

After the portrait by West. 

Return of the English Captives 291 

After the painting by West. 

Montreal 293 

After a print in the New York Public Library. 

Samuel Hearne 297 

After an engraving published in 1796. 

General Richard Montgomery 301 

After the painting by Chappel. 

Map of Quebec during the Siege of Congress Trcjops . . . 303 
Sir Guy Carleton 307 

After an engraving in Tlic Poli/iml Maiidziiic, June, 1782. 

Benedict Arnold 309 

After the portrait by Tate. 

General Haldimand 311 

After the portrait by Reynolds. 

Joseph Brant 315 

After the portrait by Ames. 

Lieutenant Governor Simcoe 316 

After an engraving in Scadding's Toronto of OIJ. 

Captain Cook 320 

After the portrait by Dauce. 

Fort Churchill as it was in 1777 320 

After a print in the Euro/can Magazine, June, 1797. 

Totem Poles, British Columbia 320 

From a photograph. 

Captain George Vancouver 322 

After the portrait by Abbott. 

NooTK.v Sound 323 

From an engraving in \'ancouver's Joiniuil. 

FoKT Chippewyan, Athap..\sca Lake ........... 325 

From a recent photograph. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xxv 

Pack 

Alexander Mackenzie 327 

After the portrait by Lawrence. 

Cause of a l'oRTA(iE 329 

From a photograph. 

Simon Eraser 331 

From a likeness in Morice's The History of llic Norilicni Inferior of British 
Columbia. 

Astoria in i Si 3 332 

From a cut in Franchere's Xarraiive of a Voyage. 

Map of West Coast, showing the Ogden and Ross Explo- 
rations 332 

From Laut's Conquest of the Great No7i.h West. 

General Sir James Henry Craig, Governor General of Canada. 

1807-iSii 336 

After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. 
William Hull 338 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph. 

Map showing the Location of the Military Operations on the 

Detroit River 340 

Map showtng the Location of the Military Operations on 

the Nia(;ara Erontier 342 

General Brock 345 

.\fter a portrait in the possession of J. A. IVLacdonell Esq.. .Vlexandria, Ontario. 

Brock Monument, Oueen.stox Heights 347 

From a photograph. 

York (Toronto) Harbor 351 

From Ijouchette's British Dominions in Xorth Aineriea. 

Eitzgibhons 357 

After a photograph reproduced in Proceedings mul Transactions of the Poyal 
Society of Canada, 1900. 

Laura Secord ; ... 361 

From Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records. 

Two \'iEWS OF TH1-: Battle of Laivic Erie 364 

From prints published in 1S15 

Tecumseh 366 

.-\fter the drawing by Pierre Le Drie. 

De Salaberrv 368 

After a portrait in Fannings Taylor's Portraits of British Americans. 

Sir Gordon Drummond 371 

.After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. 

Monument at Lundv's Lane 375 

From a photograph. 



xxvi CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

PAf.E 

Selkirk . 3S1 

From (Jntario Archives Collection. 

Nelsox and Hayes Rivers 3'S4 

From a map in Robson's Hudson Day. 

Foirr (iARRV, Red River Settle.micxt 3S7 

From Ross' Red River Sctilciuciit. 

Fort Dou(;las 3''^''^ 

After an old engraving. 
Sketch of the City of Wixxii'Er;. siiowixo the Sites of the 

Earlv Forts 391 

From Manitoba Historical ."Society 

Red Ri\er Settlemext, 1816-1820 392 

.After a map in Amos' Report of flic Trials Relative to the Dcstnictioii of the 
F.arl of Selkirk^ s Settlement. 

Monument to Commemorate the Massacre of Seven Oaks . . 397 

After a sketch. 

Tracking ox Athab.a.sca River 401 

From a photograph. 

Plans of York and Prince of Wales Forts 405 

From a plate in Robson's Hudson Bay. 

Sir George Simpson, Governor of Hudson's Bav Compaxv. 1820 406 
John McLoughlin 408 

After a likeness in Laut's Conquest of the Great Northwest. 

Sir John Sherbrooke, Governor General of Canada. 1816-1818 413 

After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. 

The Fourth Duke of Richmoxd, Go\frxor Geni;ral of Canada. 

181S-1819 , 4'9 

After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, ( )ntario. 

William Lvox Mackenzie 421 

After a likeness in Lindsey's Life and Times of Mackenzie. 

Allan McNap, 4-3 

After the portrait in the Speaker's Chambers, Ottawa. 

Louis J. Papineau 428 

After a likeness in Fannings Taylor's British .Imcrieans. 

Sir John Colhorne, Governor General of Canada, i 838-1 841 430 

After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. 

Lord Durham, Special Commissioner to Canada. 1838 .... 432 

After an engraving at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. 

John A. Macdonald 435 

From a photograph. 

Fathers of Confederation, 1867 436 

From the painting by Hariss. 



CANADA 

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

CHAPTER I 

FROM 1000 TO IGOO 

Who first found Canada? As many legends surround the 
beginmngs of emph-e in the North as cHng to the story of 
early Rome. 

When Leif, son of Earl Eric, the Red, came down from 
Greenland with his Viking crew, which of his bearded seamen 
in Arctic furs leaned over the dragon prow for sight of the lone 
new land, fresh as if washed by the dews of earth's first morn- 
ing ? Was it Thorwald, Leif's brother, or the mother of Snorri, 
first white child born in America, who caught first glimpse 
through the flying spray of Labrador's domed hills, — " Hellu- 
land, place of slaty rocks " ; and of Nova Scotia's wooded 
meadows, — " Markland " ; and Rhode Island's broken vine-clad 
shore, — " V^inland " ? The question cannot be answered. All is 
as misty concerning that Viking voyage as the legends of old 
Norse gods. 

Leif, the Lucky, son of Earl Eric, the outlaw, coasts back to 
Greenland with his bold sea rovers. This was in the year looo. 

For ten years they came riding southward in their rude- 
planked ships of the dragon prow, those Norse adventurers ; 
and Thorwald, Leif's brother, is first of the pathfinders in 
America to lose his life in battle with the " Skraelings " or 
Indians. Thornstein, another brother, sails south in 1005 with 
Gudrid, his wife ; but a roaring nor'easter tears the piping 



2 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

sails to tatters, and Thornstein dies as his frail craft scuds 
before the blast. Back comes Gudrid the very next year, with 
a new husband and a new ship and two hundred colonists to 
found a kingdom in the " Land of the Vine." At one place they 
come to rocky islands, where birds flock in such myriads it is 
impossible to land without trampling nests. Were these the 
rocky islands famous for birds in the St. Lawrence .'' On another 
coast are fields of maize and forests entangled with grapevines. 
Was this part of modern New England ? On Vinland — wher- 
ever it was — Gudrid, the Norse woman, disembarks her colonists. 
All goes well for three years. Fish and fowl are in plenty. 
Cattle roam knee-deep in pasturage. Indians trade furs for 




VIKING SHIP RECENTLY DISCOVERED 

scarlet cloth and the Norsemen dole out their barter in strips 
narrow as a little finger ; but all beasts that roam the wilds are 
free game to Indian hunters. The cattle begin to disappear, the 
Indians to lurk armed along the paths to the water springs. 
The woods are full of danger. Any bush may conceal painted 
foe. Men as well as cattle lie dead with telltale arrow sticking 
from a wound. The Norsemen begin to hate these shadowy, 
lonely, mournful forests. They long for wild winds and track- 
less seas and open world. Fur-clad, what do they care for the 
cold ? Greenland with its rolling drifts is safer hunting than 
this forest workb What glory, doomed prisoners between the 
woods and the sea within the shadow of the great forests and a 
great fear ? The smell of wildwood things, of flower banks, of 
fern mold, came dank and unwholesome to these men. Their 



EARLY VOYAGES TO AMERICA 3 

nostrils were for the whiff of the sea ; and every sunset tipped 
the waves with fire where they longed to sail. And the shadow of 
the fear fell on Gudrid. Ordering the vessels loaded with timber 
good for masts and with wealth of furs, she gathered up her people 
and led them from the " Land of the Vine " back to Greenland. 
Where was Vinland .'' Was it Canada .'' The answer is unknown. 
It was south of Labrador. It is thought to have been Rhode 
Island ; but certainly, passing north and south, the Norse were 
the first white men to see Canada. 




Did some legend, dim as a forgotten dream, come down to 
Columbus in 1492 of the Norsemen's western land ? All sailors 
of Europe yearly fished in Iceland. Had one of Columbus's crew 
heard sailor yarns of the new land ? If so, Columbus must have 
thought the new land part of Asia ; for ever since Marco Polo 
had come from China, Europe had dreamed of a way to Asia 
by the sea. What with Portugal and 
Spain dividing the New World, all the 
nations of Europe suddenly awakened 
to a passion for discovery. 

There were still lands to the north, 
which Portugal and Spain had not 
found, — lands where pearls and gold 
might abound. At Bristol in England 
dwelt with his sons John Cabot, the 
Genoese master mariner, well ac- 
quainted with P3astern trade. Henry 
VII commissions him on a voyage of 
discovery — an empty honor, the King to have one fifth of all 
profit, Cabot to bear all expense. The UlattJiciv ships from 
Bristol with a crew of eighteen in May of 1497. North and west 
sails the tumbling craft two thousand miles. Colder grows the 
air, stiffer the breeze in the bellying sails, till the Matthcivs 
crew are shivering on decks amid fleets of icebergs that drift 
from Greenland in May and June. This is no realm of spices 
and gold. Land looms through the mist the last week in June, 




DIVISION OF THE NEW WORLD 
BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 



4 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

rocky, surf-beaten, lonely as earth's ends, with never a sound but 
the scream of the gulls and the moan of the restless water-fret 
along endless white reefs. Not a living soul did the I^nglish 
sailors see. Weak in numbers, disappointed in the rocky land, 
they did not wait to hunt for natives. An English fiag was hastily 
unfurled and possession taken of this Empire of the North for 
England. The woods of America for the first time rang to the 
chopper. Wood and water were taken on, and the Matt/iczv had 
anchored in Bristol by the first week of August. Neither gold 









TYPICAL " HOLE IN THE WALL " AT " KITTY VIDDY," NEAR 

ST. John's, Newfoundland 



nor a way to China had Cabot found ; but he had accomplished 
three things : he had found that the New World was not a part 
of Asia, as Spain thought ; he had found the continent itself ; 
and he had given England the right to claim new dominion. 

England went mad over Cabot. He was granted the title of 
admiral and allowed to dress in silks as a nobleman. King Henry 
gave him ^lO, equal to $500 of modern money, and a pension of 
;^20, equal to $1000 to-day. It is sometimes said that modern 
writers attribute an air of romance to these old pathfinders, 



VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 



which they would have scorned ; but " Zuan Cabot," as the 
people called him, wore the halo of glory with glee. To his 
barber he presented an island kingdom ; to a poor monk he 
gave a bishopric. His son, Sebastian, sailed out the next year 
with a fleet of six ships and three hundred men, coasting north 
as far as Greenland, south as far as Carolina, so rendering doubly 
secure England's title to the North, and bringing back news of 
the great cod banks that were to lure French and Spanish and 
English fishermen to 
Newfoundland for hun- 
dreds of years. 

Where was Cabot's 
landfall ? 

I chanced to be in 
Bonavista Bay, New- 
foundland, shortly after 
the 400th anniversary of 
Cabot's voyage. King's 
Cove, landlocked as a 
hole in a wall, mountains 
meeting sky line, pre- 
sented on one flat rock 
in letters the size of a 
house claim that it was 
//r;r John Cabot sent his 
sailors ashore to plant 
the flag on cairn of bowl- 
ders ; but when I came back from Newfoundland by way of Cape 
Breton, I found the same claim there. For generations the tradi- 
tion has been handed down from father to son among Newfound- 
land fisher folk that as Cabot's vessel, pitching and rolling to the 
tidal bore, came scudding into King's Cove, rock girt as an inland 
lake, the sailors shouted "Bona Vi.sta — Beautiful" View "; but 
Cape Breton has her legend, too. It was Cabot's report of the 
cod banks that brought the Breton fishermen out, whose name 
Cape Breton bears. 





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sb:bastian cabot 



6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

As Christopher Columbus spurred England to action, so 
Cabot now spurred Portugal and Spain and France. 

Caspar Cortereal comes in 1500 from Portugal on Cabot's 
tracks to that land of "slaty rocks" which the Norse saw long 
ago. The Gulf Stream beats the iron coast with a boom of 
thunder, and the tide swirl meets the ice drift; and it isn't a 
land to make a treasure hunter happy till there wander down to 
the shore Montaignais Indians, strapping fellows, a head taller 
than the tallest Portuguese. Cortereal lands, lures fifty savages 
on board, carries them home as slaves for Portugal's galley ships, 
and names the country — "land of laborers" — Labrador. He 
sailed again, the next year ; but never returned to Portugal. 
The seas swallowed his vessel ; or the tide beat it to pieces 
against Labrador's rocks ; or those Indians slaked their ven- 
geance by cutting the throats of master and crew. 

And Spain was not idle. In 15 13 Balboa leads his Spanish 
treasure seekers across the Isthmus of Panama, discovers the 
Pacific, and realizes what Cabot has already proved — that the 
New World is not a part of Asia. Thereupon, in swelling words, 
he takes possession of " earth, air, and water from the Pole Arctic 
to the Pole Antarctic" for Spain. A few years later Magellan 
finds his way to Asia round South America ; but this path by 
sea is too long. 

Fr(jm P'rance, Normans and Bretons are following Cabot's 
tracks to Newfoundland, to Labrador, to Cape Breton, " quhar 
men goeth a-fishing " in little cockleshell boats no bigger than 
three-masted schooner, with black-painted dories dragging in tow 
or roped on the rolling decks. Absurd it is, but with no blare 
of trumpets or royal commissions, with no guide but the wander 
spirit that lured the old Vikings over the rolling seas, these 
grizzled peasants flock from France, cross the Atlantic, and 
scatter over what were then chartless waters from the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence to the Grand Banks. 

Just as they may be seen to-day bounding over the waves in 
their little black dories, hauling in . . . hauling in the endless 
line, or jigging for squid, or lying at ease at the noonday hour 



THE FRENCH FISHER FOLK 7 

singing some old land ballad while the kettle of cod and pork 
boils above a chip fire kindled on the stones used as ballast in 
their boats — so came the French fisher folk three years after 
Cabot had discovered the Grand Banks. Denys of Honfleur has 
led his fishing fleet all over the Gulf of St. Lawrence by 1506. 
So has Aubert of Dieppe. By 15 17, fifty French vessels yearly 
fish off the coast of New-Found-Land. By 15 18 one Baron de 
Lery has formed the project of colonizing this new domain ; but 
the baron's ship unluckily came from the Grand Banks to port 
on that circular bank of sand known as Sable Island — from 
twenty to thirty miles as the tide shifts the sand, with grass 
waist high and a swampy lake in the middle. The Baron de 
Lery unloads his stock on Sable Island and roves the sea for a 
better port. 

The King of France, meanwhile, resents the Pope dividing 
the New World between Spain and Portugal. " I should like to 
see the clause in leather Adam's will that gives the whole earth 
to you," he sent word to his brother kings. Verrazano, sea rover 
of Florence, is commissioned to explore the New World seas ; 
but Verrazano goes no farther north in i 524 than Newfoundland, 
and when he comes on a second voyage he is lost — some say 
hanged as a pirate by the Spaniards for intruding on their seas. 

In spite of the loss of the King's sea rover, the fisher folk of 
France continue coming in their crazy little schooners, continue 
fishing in the fogs of the Grand Banks from their rocking black- 
planked dories, continue scudding for shelter from storm . . . here, 
there, everywhere ; into the south shore of Newfoundland ; into 
the long arms of the sea at Cape Breton, dyed at sundawn and 
sunset by such floods of golden light, these arms of the sea become 
known as Bras d'Or Lakes — Lakes of Gold ; into the rock-girt 
lagoons of Gaspe ; into the holes in the wall of Labrador . . . ; 
till there presently springs up a secret trade in furs between 
the fishing fleet and the Indians. The King of France is not to 
be balked by one failure. "What," he asked, "are my royal 
brothers to have all America 1 " Among the Bank fishermen 
were many sailors of St. Malo. Jacques Cartier, master pilot, 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



now forty years of age, must have learned strange yarns of the 
New World from harbor folk. Indeed, he may have served as 
sailor on the Banks. Him the King chose, with one hundred 
and twenty men and two vessels, in 1534, to go on a voyage 

of discovery to 
the great sea 
where m e n 
fished. Cartier 
was to find if 
the sea led 
to China and 
to take posses- 
sion of the 
countries for 
France. Cap- 
tain, masters, 
men, march to 
the cathedral 
and swear fidel- 
ity to the King. 
The vessels 
sail on April 
20, with the 
fishing fleet. 

Pil)ing winds 
carry them for- 
ward at a clip- 
per pace. The 
sails scatter 
and disappear 
over the watery 

sky line. In twenty days Cartier is off that bold headland with 
the hole in the wall called Bona Vista. Ice is running as it always 
runs tiiere in spring. What with wind and ice, Cartier deems it 
prudent to look for shelter. Sheering south among the scarps 
at Catalina, where the whales blow and the seals float in thousands 




CARTIER'S FIRST VOYAGE 9 

on the ice pans, Cartier anchors to take on wood and water. For 
ten days he watches the white whirl driving south. Then the 
water clears and his sails swing to the wind, and he is off to 
the north, along that steel-gray shore of rampart rock, between 
the white-slab islands and the reefy coast. Birds are in such 
flocks off Funk Island that the men go ashore to hunt, as the 
fisher folk anchor for bird shooting to-day. 

Higher rises the rocky sky line ; barer the shore wall, with 
never a break to the eye till you turn some jagged peak and 




WHERE THE FISHER HAMLETS NOW NESTLE, NEWFOUNDLAND 



come on one of those snug coves where the white fisher ham- 
lets now nestle. Reefs white as lace fret line the coast. Lonely 
as death, bare as a block of marble. Gull Island is passed where 
another crew in later years perish as castaways. Gray finback 
whales flounder in schools. The lazy humpbacks lounge round 
and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously. A polar bear is 
seen on an ice pan. Then the ships come to those lonely har- 
bors north of Newfoundland — Griguet and Ouirpon and Ha- 
Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless, always windy, desolate, with an 
eternal moanino' of the tide over the fretful reefs. 



lO CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

To the north, off a httle seaward, is Belle Isle. Here, storm 
or calm, the ocean tide beats with fury unceasing and weird 
reechoing of baffled waters like the scream of lost souls. It was 
sunset when I was on a coastal ship once that anchored off Belle 
Isle, and I realized how natural it must have been for Cartier's 
superstitious sailors to mistake the moan of the sea for wild 
cries of distress, and the smoke of the spray for fires of the 
inferno. To French sailors Belle Isle became Isle of Demons. 
In the half light of fog or night, as the wave wash rises and 
falls, you can almost see white arms clutching the rock. 

As usual, bad weather caught the ships in Belle Isle Straits. 
Till the 9th of June brown fog held Cartier. When it lifted 
the tide had borne his ships across the straits to Labrador at 
Castle Island. Chateau Bay. Labrador was a ruder region than 
Newfoundland. Far as eye could scan were only domed rocks 
like petrified billows, dank valleys moss-grown and scrubby, hill- 
sides bare as slate. "This land should not be called cartJi'' 
remarked Cartier. "It is flint ! Faith, I think this is the region 
God gave Cain ! " If this were Cain's realm, his descendants 
were "men of might"; for when the Montaignais, tall and 
straight as mast poles, came down to the straits, Cartier's little 
scrub sailors thought them giants. Promptly Cartier planted 
the cross and took possession of Labrador for France. As the 
boats coasted westward the shore rock turned to sand, — huge 
banks and drifts and hillocks of white sand, — so that the place 
where the ships struck across for the south shore became known 
as Blanc Sablon (White Sand). Squalls drove Cartier up the 
Bay of Islands on the west shore of Newfoundland, and he was 
amazed to find this arm of the sea cut the big island almost in 
two. Wooded mountains flanked each shore. A great river, 
amber with forest mold, came rolling down a deep gorge. But 
it was not Newfoundland Cartier had come to explore ; it was 
the great inland sea to the west, and to the west he sailed. 

July found him off another kind of coast — New Brunswick 
— forested and rolling with fertile meadows. Down a broad 
shallow stream — the Miramichi — paddled Indians waving furs 



CARTIER'S FIRST VOYAGE II 

for trade ; but wind threatened a stranding in the shallows. 
Cartier turned to follow the coast north. Denser grew the 
forests, broader the girths of the great oaks, heavier the vines, 
hotter the midsummer weather. This was no land of Cain. It 
was a new realm for France. While Cartier lay at anchor north 
of the Miramichi, Indian canoes swarmed round the boats at 
such close quarters the whites had to discharge a musket to 
keep the three hundred savages from scrambling on decks. 
Two seamen then landed to leave presents of knives and coats. 
The Indians shrieked delight, and, following back to the ships, 
threw fur garments to the decks till literally naked. On the 
1 8th of July the heat was so intense that Cartier named the 
waters Bay of Chaleur. Here were more Indians. At first 
the women dashed to hiding in the woods, while the painted 
warriors paddled out ; but when Cartier threw more presents 
into the canoes, women and children swarmed out singing a 
welcome. The Bay of Chaleur promised no passage west, so Car- 
tier again spread his sails to the wind and coasted northward. 
The forests thinned. Towards Gaspe the shore became rocky 
and fantastic. The inland sea led westward, but the season was 
far advanced. It was decided to return and report to the King. 
Landing at Gaspe on July 24, Cartier erected a cross thirty feet 
high with the words emblazoned on a tablet, Vive le Roi de 
France. Standing about him were the painted natives of the 
wilderness, one old chief dressed in black bearskin gesticulating 
protest against the cross till Cartier explained by signs that the 
whites would come again. Two savages were invited on board. 
By accident or design, as they stepped on deck, their skiff was 
upset and set adrift. The astonished natives found themselves 
in the white men's power, but food and gay clothing allayed 
fear. They willingly consented to accompany Cartier to France. 
Somewhere north of Gaspe the smoke of the French fishing 
fleet was seen ascending from the sea, as the fishermen rocked 
in their dories cooking the midday meal. 

August 9 prayers are held for safe return at Blanc Sablon, — 
port of the white, white sand, — and by September 5 Cartier is 



12 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

home in St. Malo, a rabble of grizzled sailor folk chattering a 
welcome from the wharf front. 

He had not found passage to China, but he had found a king- 
dom ; and the two Indians told marvelous tales of the Great River 
to the West, where they lived, of mines, of vast unclaimed lands. 

Cartier had been home only a month when the Admiral of 
France ordered him to prepare for another voyage. He him- 
self was to command the Grand Herniinc, Captain Jalobert the 
Little Herinine, and Captain Le Breton the Emcrillon. Young 
gentlemen adventurers were to accompany the explorers. The 
ships were provisioned for two years ; and on May i6, 1535, all 
hands gathered to the cathedral, where sins were confessed, the 
archbishop's blessing received, and Cartier given a Godspeed 
to the music of full choirs chanting invocation. Three days 
later anchors were hoisted. Cannon boomed. Sails swung out ; 
and the vessels sheered away from the roadstead while cheers 
rent the air. 

Head winds held the ship back. Furious tempests scattered 
the fleet. It was July 17 before Cartier sighted the gull islands 
of Newfoundland and swung up north with the tide through the 
brown fogs of Belle Isle Straits to the shining gravel of Blanc 
Sablon. Here he waited for the other vessels, which came on 
the 26th. 

The two Indians taken from Gaspe now began to recog- 
nize the headlands of their native country, telling Cartier the 
first kingdom along the Great River was Saguenay, the second 
Canada, the third Hochelaga. Near Mingan, Cartier anchored 
to claim the land for France ; and he named the great waters 
St. Lawrence because it was on that saint's day he had gone 
ashore. The north side of Anticosti was passed, and the first 
of September saw the three little ships drawn up within the 
shadow of that somber gorge cut through sheer rock where 
the Saguenay rolls sullenly out to the St. Lawrence. The moun- 
tains presented naked rock wall. Beyond, rolling back . . . roll- 
ing back to an impenetrable wilderness . . . were the primeval 



CARTIER'S SECOND VOYAGE 



13 



forests. Through the canyon flowed the river, dark and ominous 
and hushed. The men rowed out in small boats to fish but were 
afraid to land. 

As the ships advanced up the St. Lawrence the seamen could 
scarcely believe they were on a river. The current rolled sea- 
ward in a silver flood. In canoes paddling shyly out from the 
north shore Cartier's two Indians suddenly recognized old 
friends, and whoops of delight set the echoes ringing. 

Keeping close to the north coast, russet in the September 
sun, Cartier slipped up that long reach of shallows abreast a 
low-shored wooded island so laden with grapevines he called it 
Isle Bacchus. It was the Island of Orleans. 

Then the ships rounded westward, and there burst to view 
against the high rocks of the north shore the white-plumed shim- 
mering cataract of Montmorency leaping from precipice to river 
bed with roar of thunder. 

Cartier had anchored near the west end of Orleans Island 
when there came paddling out with twelve canoes, Donnacona, 
great chief of Stadacona, whose friendship was won on the instant 
by the tales Cartier's Indians told of France and all the marvels 
of the white man's world. 

Cartier embarked with several young officers to go back with 
the chief ; and the three vessels were cautiously piloted up little 
St. Charles River, which joins the St. Lawrence below the mod- 
ern city of Quebec. Women dashed to their knees in water to 
welcome ashore these gayly dressed newcomers with the gold- 
braided coats and clanking swords. Crossing the low swamp, now 
Lower Town, Quebec, the adventurers followed a path through 
the forest up a steep declivity of sliding stones to the clear high 
table-land above, and on up the rolling slopes to the airy heights 
of Cape Diamond overlooking the St. Lawrence like the turret 
of some castle above the sea. Did a French soldier, removing 
his helmet to wipe away the sweat of his arduous climb, cry out 
"Que bee " (What a peak !) as he viewed the magnificent pano- 
rama of river and valley and mountain rolling from his feet; or 
did their Indian guide point to the water of the river narrowing like 



14 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

a strait below the peak, and mutter in native tongue, " Quebec " 
(The strait) ? Legend gives both explanations of the name. 
To the east Cartier could see far down the silver flood of the 
St. Lawrence halfway to Saguenay ; to the south, far as the dim 
mountains of modern New Hampshire. What would the King 
of France have thought if he could have realized that his adven- 
turers had found a province three times the size of England, 
one third larger than France, one third larger than Germany ? 
And they had as yet reached only one small edge of Canada, 
namely Quebec. 

Heat haze of Indian summer trembled over the purple hills. 
Below, the river quivered like quicksilver. In the air was the 
nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts 
crystal to the taste as water ; and if one listened, almost hstened 
to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the 
far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been 
the airy fabric of some dream world ; but out of dreams of earth's 
high heroes are empires made. 

But the Indians had told of that other kingdom, Hochelaga. 
Hither Cartier had determined to go, when three Indians dressed 
as devils — faces black as coals, heads in masks, brows adorned 
with elk horns — came gyrating and howling out of the woods 
on the mountain side, making wild signals to the white men 
encamped on the St. Charles. Cartier's interpreters told him 
this was warning from the Indian god not to ascend the river. 
The god said Hochelaga was a realm of snow, where all white 
men would perish. It was a trick to keep the white men's trade 
for themselves. 

Cartier laughed. 

"Tell them their god is an old fool," he said. "Christ is to 
be our guide." 

The Indians wanted to know if Cartier had spoken to his God 
about it. 

"No," answered Cartier. Then, not to be floored, he added, 
"but my priest has." 



CARTIER'S SECOND VOYAGE 



15 



With three cheers, fifty young gentlemen sheered out on 
September 19 from the St. Charles on the Emcrilloii to accom- 
pany Cartier to Hochelaga. 

Beyond Quebec the St. Lawrence widened like a lake. Sep- 
tember frosts had painted the maples in flame. Song birds, the 
glory of the St. Lawrence valley, were no longer to be heard, 
but the waters literally swarmed with duck and the forests were 
alive with partridge. Where to-day nestle church spires and 
whitewashed hamlets were the birch wigwams and night camp 




ANCIENT HOCHELAGA 
(From Ramusio) 

fires of Lidian hunters. W^herever Cartier went ashore, Lidians 
rushed knee-deep to carry him from the river ; and one old chief 
at Richelieu signified his pleasure by presenting the whites with 
two Indian children. Zigzagging leisurely, now along the north 
shore, now along the south, pausing to hunt, pausing to explore, 
pausing to powwow with the Indians, the adventurers came, on 
September 28, to the reedy shallows and breeding grounds of 
wild fowl at Lake St. Peter. Here they were so close ashore 
the Euicrillon caught her keel in the weeds, and the explorers 
left her aground under guard and went forward in rowboats. 



l6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

"Was this the way to Hochelaga?" the rowers asked Indians 
paddling i)ast. 

" Yes, three more sleeps," the Indians answered by the sign 
of putting the face with closed eyes three times against their 
hand; "three more nights would bring Cartier to Hochelaga"; 
and on the night of the 2d of October the rowboats, stopped 
by the rapids, pulled ashore at Hochelaga amid a concourse of 
a thousand amazed savages. 

It was too late to follow the trail through the darkening 
forest to the Indian village. Cartier placed the soldiers in their 
burnished armor on guard and spent the night watching the 
council fires gleam from the mountain. And did some soldier 
standing sentry, watching the dark shadow of the hill creep 
longer as the sun went down, cry out, " Mont Royal," so that 
the place came to be known as Montreal ? 

At peep of dawn, while the mist is still smoking up from the 
river, Cartier marshals twenty seamen with officers in military 
line, and, to the call of trumpet, marches along the forest trail 
behind Indian guides for the tribal fort. Following the river, 
knee-deep in grass, the French ascend the hill now known as 
Notre Dame Street, disappear in the hollow where flows a stream, 
— modern Craig Street, — then climb steeply through the forests 
to the plain now known as the great thoroughfare of Sherbrooke 
Street. Halfway up they come on open fields of maize or Indian 
corn. Here messengers welcome them forward, women singing, 
tom-tom beating, urchins stealing fearful glances through the 
woods. The trail ends at a fort with triple palisades of high 
trees, walls separated by ditches and roofed for defense, with 
one carefully guarded narrow gate. Inside are fifty large wig- 
wams, the oblong bark houses of the Huron-Iroquois, each fifty 
feet long, with the public square in the center, or what we would 
call the courtyard. 

It needs no trick of fancy to call up the scene — the wind- 
ing of the trumpet through the forest silence, the amazement 
of the Indian drummers, the arrested frenzy of the dancers, the 
sunrise turning burnished armor to fire, the clanking of swords, 



CARTIER'S SECOND VOYAGE 1 7 

the wheeling of the soldiers as they fall in place, helmets doffed, 
round the council fire ! Women swarm from the long houses. 
Children come running with mats for seats. Bedridden, blind, 
maimed are carried on litters, if only they may touch the gar- 
ments of these wonderful beings. One old chief with skin like 
crinkled leather and body gnarled with woes of a hundred years 
throws his most precious possession, a headdress, at Cartier's feet. 

Poor Cartier is perplexed. He can but read aloud from the 
Gospel of St. John and pray Christ heal these supplicants. Then 
he showers presents on the Indians, gleeful as children ■ — knives 
and hatchets and beads and tin mirrors and little images and a 
crucifix, which he teaches them to kiss. Again the silver trum- 
pet peals through the aisled woods. Again the swords clank, 
and the adventurers take their way up the mountain — a Mont 
Royal, says Cartier. 

The mountain is higher than the one at Quebec. Vaster the 
view — vaster the purple mountains, the painted forests, the val- 
leys bounded by a sky line that recedes before the explorer as 
the rainbow runs from the grasp of a child. This is not Cathay ; 
it is a New France. Before going back to Quebec the adven- 
turers follow a trail up the St. Lawrence far enough to see that 
Lachine Rapids bar progress by boat ; far enough, too, to see 
that the Gaspe Indians had spoken truth when they told of 
another grand river — the Ottawa — coming in from the north. 

By the i ith of October Cartier is at Quebec. His men have 
built a palisaded fort on the banks of the St. Charles. The 
boats are beached. Indians scatter to their far hunting grounds. 
Winter sets in. Canadian cold is new to these Frenchmen. 
They huddle indoors instead of keeping vigorous with exercise. 
Ice hangs from the dismantled masts. Drifts heap almost to top 
of palisades. Fear of the future falls on the crew. Will they ever 
see France again ? Then scurvy breaks out. The fort is prostrate. 
Cartier is afraid to ask aid of the wandering Indians lest they 
learn his weakness. To keep up show of strength he has his 
men fire off muskets, batter the fort walls, march and drill and 



l8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

tramp and stamp, though twenty-five He dead and only four are 
able to keep on their feet. The corpses are hidden in snow- 
drifts or crammed through ice holes in the river with shot 
weighted to their feet. 

In desperation Cartier calls on all the saints in the Christian 
calendar. He erects a huge crucifix and orders all, well and ill, 
out in procession. Weak and hopeless, they move across the 
snows chanting psalms. That night one of the young noblemen 
died. Toward spring an Indian was seen apparently recovering 
from the same disease. Cartier asked him what had worked the 
cure and learned of the simple remedy of brewed spruce juice. 

By the time the Indians came from the winter hunt Cartier's 
men were in full health. Up at Hochelaga a chief had seized 
Cartier's gold-handled dagger and pointed up the Ottawa whence 
came ore like the gold handle. Failing to carry any minerals 
home, Cartier felt he must have witnesses to his report. The 
boats are rigged to sail, Chief Donnacona and eleven others are 
lured on board, surrounded, forcibly seized, and treacherously 
carried off to France. May 6, 1536, the boats leave Quebec, 
stopping only for water at St. Pierre, where the Breton fishermen 
have huts. July 16 they anchor at St. Malo. 

Did France realize that Cartier had found a new kingdom .■' 
Not in the least ; but the home land gave heed to that story of 
minerals, and had the kidnapped Indians baptized. Donnacona 
and all his fellow-captives but the little girl of Richelieu die, 
and Sieur de Roberval is appointed lord paramount of Canada 
to equip Cartier with five vessels and scour the jails of France 
for colonists. Though the colonists are convicts, the convicts are 
not criminals. Some have been convicted for their religion, some 
for their politics. What with politics and war, it is May, 1541, 
before the ships sail, and then Roberval has to wait another year 
for his artillery, while Cartier goes ahead to build the forts. 

From the first, things go wrong. Head winds prolong the pas- 
sage for three months. The stock on board is reduced to a diet 
of cider, and half the cattle die. Then the Indians of Quebec 



CARTIER'S THIRD VOYAGE 1 9 

ask awkward questions about Donnacona. Cartier flounders 
mklway between truth and lie. Donnacona had died, he said ; 
as for the others, they have become as white men. Agona suc- 
ceeds Donnacona as chief. Agona is so pleased at the news that 
he gives Cartier a suit of buckskin garnished with wampum, but 
the rest of the Indians draw off in such resentment that Cartier 
deems it wise to build his fort at a distance, and sails nine miles 
up to Cape Rouge, where he constructs Bourg Royal. Noel, his 
nephew, and Jalobert, his brother-in-law, take two ships back 
to France. While Cartier roams exploring, Beaupre commands 
Bourg Ro}'al. 

In his roamings, ever with his eyes to earth for minerals, he 
finds stones specked with mica, and false diamonds, whence the 
height above Quebec is called Cape Diamond. It is enough. The 
crews spend the year loading the ships with cargo of worthless 
stones, and set sail in May, high of hope for wealth great as Span- 
iard carried from Peru. June 8 the ships slip in to St. John's, New- 
foundland, for water. Seventeen fishing vessels rock to the tide 
inside the landlocked lagoon, and who comes gliding up the 
Narrows of the harbor neck but Viceroy Roberval, mad with 
envy when he hears of the diamond cargoes! He breaks the 
head of a Portuguese or two among the fishing fleet and forth- 
with orders Cartier back to Quebec. 

Cartier shifts anchor from too close range of Roberval's guns 
and says nothing. At dead of night he slips anchor altogether 
and steals away on the tide, with only one little noiseless sail up 
on each ship through the dark Narrows. Once outside, he spreads 
his wings to the wind and is off for France. The diamonds prove 
worthless, but Cartier receives a title and retires to a seigneurial 
mansion at St. Malo. 

The episode did not improve Roberval's temper. The new 
Viceroy was a soldier and a martinet, and his authority had 
been defied. With his two hundred colonists, taken from the 
prisons of PVance, commanded by young French officers, — a 
Lamont and a La Salle among others, — he proceeded up the 
coast of Newfoundland to enter the St. Lawrence by Belle Isle. 



20 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Among his people were women, and Roberval himself was accom- 
panied by a niece, Marguerite, who had the reputation of being 
a bold horsewoman and prime favorite with the grandees who 
frequented her uncle's castle. Perhaps Roberval had brought' 
her to New France to break up her attachment for a soldier. 
Or the Viceroy may have been entirely ignorant of the romance, 
but, anchored off Belle Isle, — Isle of Demons, — the angry gov- 
ernor made an astounding discovery. The girl had a lover on 
board, a common soldier, and the two openly defied his inter- 
dict. Coming after Cartier's defection, the incident was oil to 
fire with Roberval. Sailors were ordered to lower the rowboat. 
One would fain believe that the tyrannical Viceroy offered the 
high-spirited girl at least the choice of giving up her lover. She 
was thrust into the rowboat with a faithful old Norman nurse. 
Four guns and a small supply of provisions were tossed to the 
boat. The sailors were then commanded to row ashore and 
abandon her on Isle of Demons. The soldier lover leaped over 
decks and swam through the surf to share her fate. 

Isle of Demons, with its wailing tides and surf-beaten reefs, 
is a desolate enough spot in modern days when superstitions do 
not add to its terrors. The wind pipes down from The Labrador 
in fairest weather with weird voices as of wailing ghosts, and in 
winter the shores of Belle Isle never cease to echo to the hollow 
booming of the pounding surf. 

Out of driftwood the castaways constructed a hut. Fish were 
in plenty, wild fowl offered easy mark, and in springtime the 
ice floes brought down the seal herds. There was no lack of food, 
but rescue seemed forever impossible ; for no fishing craft would 
approach the demon-haunted isle. A year passed, two years, — a 
child was born. The soldier lover died of heartbreak and despond- 
ency. The child wasted away. The old nurse, too, was buried. 
Marguerite was left alone to fend for herself and hope against hope 
that some of the passing sails would heed her signals. No wonder 
at the end of the third year she began to hear shrieking laughter 
in the lonely cries of tide and wind, and to imagine that she saw 
fiendish arms snatching through the spume of storm drift. 



MARGUERITE ROBERVAL 



21 



Towards the fall of 1 545, one calm day when spray for the once 
did not hide the island, some fishermen in the straits noticed the 
smoke of a huge bonfire ascending from Isle Demons. Was it a 
trick of the fiends to lure men to wreck, or some sailors like 
themselves signaHng distress ? 

The boat drew fearfully near and nearer. A creature in the 
strange attire of skins from wild beasts ran down the rocks, 
signaling frantically. It was a woman. Terrified and trembling, 



5| CANjA DA ^ 'f^j^ 



f^^^S'^ /X^MEaJ^E TRANCE : 



,E SAC NAY -^.^ f:?i^«a^ hXiAj-i? \ ^ ^^^'i"-''^ShT ^^ 

-rs-^^^ ^ 'T<\ 5 ,s» In .1'"' i-.''A-\\ Y 

MER DESPAICNE " 

LA MER OCCEANE '^ 







the " dall'hix map " of canada, c/kca 1543, .showing 
cartiek's discoveries 

the sailors plucked up courage to land. Then for the first time 
Marguerite Roberval's spirit gave way. She could not speak ; 
she seemed almost bereft of reason. It was only after the fisher- 
men had nourished her back to semblance of womanhood that 
they drew from her the story. On returning to France, Marguerite 
Roberval entered a convent. It was there an old court friend 
of her chateau days sought her out and heard the tale from her 
own lips. 



2 2 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

A colony begun under such ill omen was not likely to prosper. 
Roberval had proceeded to Cape Rouge, where he landed in July, 
and before winter had a respectable fort constructed. Fifty of 
his colonists died of scurvy. As many as six were hanged in a 
single day for insubordination, and the whipping post became the 
emblem of an authority that trembled in the balance. Roberval, 
in truth, was not thinking of the colony. He was thinking of 
those minerals which the Indians said were at the head waters 
of the Saguenay. Leaving thirty women at the fort, he ascended 
the Saguenay with seventy men in spring and explored as far 
as Lake St. John, where the village of Roberval commemorates 
his feat ; but he found no minerals and lost eight men running 
rapids. When Cartier came out in 1543, Roberval took the re- 
maining colonists home, a profoundly embittered man. Legend 
has it that he either perished on a second voyage in 1549, or was 
assassinated in Paris. 

So falls the curtain on the first attempt to colonize Canada. 



CHAPTER II 

FROM 1600 TO 1G07 

The second attempt to plant a French colony in the New 
World was more disastrous than the first. 

Though my Lord Roberval fails, the French fishing vessels 
continue to bound over the billows of the Atlantic to the New 
World. By 1578 there are a hundred and fifty French fish- 
ing vessels off Newfoundland alone. The fishing folk engage in 
barter. Cartier's heirs ask for a monopoly of the fur trade in 
Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the merchants 
of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la 
Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains 
monopoly, with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the 
added obligation that he must colonize the new land. What with 
wars and court intrigue, it is 1598 before the Governor of Canada 
is ready to sail. Of his two hundred people taken from jails, all 
but sixty have obtained their freedom by paying a ransom. With 
these sixty La Roche follows the fishing fleet out to the Grand 
Banks, then rounds southwestward for milder clime, where he 
may winter his people. 

Straight across the ship's course lies the famous sand bank, 
the graveyard of the Atlantic, — what the old navigators called 
" the dreadful isle," — Sable Island. The sea lies placid as glass 
between the crescent horns of the long, low reefs, — thirty miles 
from horn to horn, with never a tree to break the swale of the 
grass waist-high. 

The marquis lands his sixty colonists to fish for supplies, 
while he goes on with the crew to find place for settlement. 

Barely has the topsail dipped over the watery sky before 
breakers begin to thunder on the sand reefs. Air and earth 
lash to fury. Sails are torn from the ship of the marquis. His 

23 



24 CANADA: THE EMPIRp: OF THE NORTH 

masts go overboard, and the vessel is driven, helpless as a 
chip in a maelstrom, clear back to the ports of France. Here 
double misfortune awaits La Roche. His old patrons of the 
court are no longer powerful. He is thrown in prison by a 
rival baron. 

In vain the colonists strain tired eyes for a sail at sea. Days 
become weeks, weeks months, summer autumn ; and no boat came 
back. As winter gales assailed the sea, sending the sand drifting 
like spray, the convicts built themselves huts out of driftwood, 
and scooped beds for themselves in the earth like rabbit burrows. 
Of food there was plenty. The people had their fishing" lines ; 
and the stock, left by the Baron de Lery long ago, had multiplied 
and now overran the island. Wild fowl, too, teemed on the in- 
land lake ; and foxes, which must have drifted ashore on the ice 
float of spring, ran wild through the sedge. 

Like Robinson Crusoe cast on a desert isle, the desperate 
people fought their fate. Traps were set for the foxes, snares 
for the birds, and scouts kept tramping from end to end of the 
island for sight of a sail. Racked with despair and anxiety, 
these outcasts of civilization soon fell to bitter quarreling. Traps 
were found rifled. Dead men lay beside the looted traps ; and, 
doubtless, not a few men lost their lives in spring when the ice 
floes drifted down with the seal herds, and the men gave mad 
chase from ice pan to ice pan for seal pelts to make clothing. 
Spring wore to summer. The graves on the sand banks increased. 
For a second winter the dreary snowfall wrapped the island in 
a mantle white as death sheet. Then came the same weary 
monotony, — the frenzied seal hunt over the blood-stained floes; 
the long summer days with the drone of the tide on the sand 
banks ; the men mad with hope at sight of a sail peak over the 
far wave tops, only to be plunged in despair as the fisher boat 
passed too far for signal ; the fading of the grasses to russet in 
the sad autumn light; then snowfall again — and despair. 

Five years passed before La Roche could aid his people ; and 
the pilot who went to their rescue won himself immortal con- 
tempt by robbing the castaways of their furs. Word of the 



ENGLISH VOYAGES TO NORTH AMERICA 



25 



rescue came to the ears of the court. Royalty commantlecl the 
refugees brought before the throne. Only twelve had survived, 
and these marched before the ro\nl luesence clothed in the 
skins of seals, hair un- 
kempt, beards to mid- 
waist, " like river gods 
of yore," says the old 
record. The King was 
so touched that he com- 
manded fifty crowns 
given to each man and 
the stolen furs restored. 
La Roche died of chagrin. 

While France is try- 
ing to colonize Canada, 
England has not forgot- 
ten that John Cabot first 
coasted these northern 
shores and erected the 
English flag. 

About the time that 
Marguerite Roberval 
was left alone on Isle 
Demons, two boys — 
half-brothers — were 
playing on the sands of 
the English Channel, 
sailing toy boats and 
listening to sailor yarns 
of loot on the Spanish 
Main. One was Humphrey Gilbert ; the other, Walter Raleigh. 
These two were destined to lead England's first colonies to 
America. 

Martin Frobisher had already poked the prows of English 
ships into the icy straits of Greenland waters, seeking way to 




QUEEN ELIZ.ABETH 



26 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

China. He had come out with a fleet of fifteen sails and one 
hundred mariners in 1578 to found colonies, but was led away 
by the lure of " fool's gold." Loading his vessels with worthless 
rocks which he believed contained gold enough " to suffice all 
the gold gluttons of the world," he sailed back to England with- 
out leaving the trace of a colony. Francis Drake, the very same 
year, had for the first time plowed an English furrow around 
the seas of the world, chasing Spanish treasure boats up the 
west coast of South America and loading his own vessel with 
loot to the water line. Afraid to go back the way he had come, 
round South America, where all the Spanish frigates lay in wait 
to catch him, Drake pushed on up the west coast as far as Cali- 
fornia, and landing, took possession of what he called " New 
Albion " for Queen Elizabeth. But still no colony had been 
planted for England. 

Gilbert and Raleigh, the two half-brothers, were both zealous 
for glory. Both stood high in court favor. Both had fought for 
Queen Elizabeth in the wars. Gilbert had fame as seaman and 
geographer. He asks for the privilege of founding England's 
first colony. The Queen will incur no expense. Gilbert and 
Raleigh and their friends will fit out the vessels. Elizabeth 
deeds to Gilbert all that old domain discovered by John Cabot, 
reserving only one fifth of the minerals he may find ; and she 
sends him a present of a golden anchor as a Godspeed. June 
II, 1583, Sir Humphrey sets sail with a fleet of three splendid 
merchantmen, fitted out as men-of-war, and two heavily armed 
little frigates. The crews number three hundred and si.xty 
men, but they are for the most part impressed seamen and 
riotous. The fleet is only well away when the biggest of the 
merchantmen signals that plague has broken out, and flees back 
to England. Later, as fog hides the boats from one another, 
the pirate crew on board the little frigate Siual/ozv run down 
an English fisherman on the Grand Banks, board her, and at 
bayonet point loot the schooner from stem to stern. When 
the ships lower sail to come in on the tide through the long 
Narrows to the rock-girt harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland, 



SIR HUMPHREY GH.BERT 



27 



the hundreds of fishing vessels lying at anchor there object 
to the pirate Swalloiv ; but Sir Humphrey reads his com- 
mission from the Queen, and the fishing fleet roars a wel- 
come that sets the rocks ringing. Sunday, August 4, the next 
day after entering, Biscayans and French and Portuguese 
and English send their new Governor tribute in provisions, — 
fish from the En<r- 



lish, marmalade 
and wines an cl 
spices from the 
foreigners. The 
admiral gives a 
feast to the mas- 
ter mariners each 
week he is in port, 
and entertains — 
as the old record 
says — "right 
bountifully." 
Wandering round 
the rocky harbor, 
up the high cliff 
to the left where 
remnants of an 
old fortress may 
be seen to-day, 
along the circular 
hills to the right 

where the fishing stages cover the water front, Gilbert's men 
find "fool's gold," rock with specks of iron and mica. Daniel, 
th2 refiner of metals, declares it is a rich specimen of silver. 
The find goes to Sir Humphrey's head. He sees himself a second 
Francis Drake, ships crammed with gold. When the captains of 
the other vessels in his fleet would see the treasure, he answers : 
" Content yourselves ! It is enough ! I have seen it but I would 
have no speech made of it in harbor ; for the Portuguese and 




SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT 



28 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Biscayans and French might learn of it. We shall soon return 
hither again." 

Many of the men are in ill health. Gilbert decides to send 
the invalids home in the Szua/lozu ; but he transfers the bold 
pirate crew of that frigate to the big ship Delight, which carries 
provisions for the colony. While planning to make St. John's 
the headquarters of his new kingdom, Sir Humphrey wishes to 
explore those regions where Cartier had gone and whence the 
fishing schooners bring such wealth in furs. 

August 20 the remainder of his fleet rounds out of St. John's 
south west for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, — the Delight with the 
provisions, the Golden Hinde with the majority of the people, 
the little frigate Squirrel weighted down by artillery stores but 
under command of Gilbert himself, because the smaller ship can 
run close ashore to explore. To keep up the spirits of the men, 
there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off Cape Breton, Sir 
Humphrey visits the big ship Delight, where the trumpets and 
the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor 
jigs. "There was," -says the old record, "little watching for 
■danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned 
•the reefs of Sable Island. Breakers were sighted. The Delight 
signaled that her captain wanted to shift southwest to deeper 
water, but Gilbert wanted to enter the St. Lawrence and sig- 
naled back to go on northwest. That night a storm raged. The 
provision ship ran full tilt into the sand banks of Sable Island, 
and was battered into chips before the other ships could come 
to rescue. All supplies were lost and all the pirate crew perished 
but sixteen, who jumped into the pinnace dragging astern, and, 
with only one oar, half punted, half drifted for seven days till 
the wave wash carried them to the shores of Newfoundland. 
There they were picked up by a fishing vessel. 

With provisions gone. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colony was 
doomed. He must turn back. Saturday, August 31, they 
reversed the course. When halfway across the Atlantic the 
admiral rowed from the little Squirrel across to the Golden 
Hinde to have a lame foot treated by the surgeon. " Cheer 



SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT 



29 



up," he urged the men. " Next year her Majesty will loan me 
;£iooo, and we shall come again." 

As storm was gathering, the men begged him to remain on 
the larger ship, but Gilbert refused to leave the sailors of the 
Squirrel. The frigate was as safe for him as for them, he said. 
Some one called his attention to the fact that the frigate was 
overweighted with 
cannon. Gilbert 
laughed all danger 
to scorn. Soon 
afterwards the 
waves began to 
bieak short and 
high — a dangerous 
sea for a small, 
overweighted ship. 
It had been ar- 
ranged that both 
ships should swing 
lanterns fore and 
aft to keep each 
other in sight at 
night. On the 
night of Septem- 
ber 9 a phosphores- 
cent light was seen 
to gleam above 
the mainmast of sir walter raleigh 

the Squirrel, — 

certain sign to the superstitious sailors of dire disaster; but 
when the Hinde slackened speed, and the great waves threw 
the vessels almost together, there was Sir Humphrey sitting 
aloft, book in hand, shouting out, " We are as near Heaven by 
sea as by land." The Hinde fell to the rear. The Squirrel \^^ 
away, her stern lanterns lighting a trail across the shiny dark 
of the tempestuous billows. Suddenly, at midnight, the guiding 




30 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

light was lost. The SquirnVs stern lanterns were seen to 
descend the pitching trough of a mountain wave, and when the 
wall of water fell, no light came up. Down into tlie abyss the 
little craft had plunged, never to rise again, carrying explorer, 
treasure hunters, colonists, to a watery grave. 

It may be added that the disaster took place halfway across 
the ocean, and not off Newfoundland, as the ballad relates. 

But for all this misfortune, England did not desist. The very 
next year Raleigh, who had played on the sands with Humphrey 
Gilbert, sends out his colonists to the Roanoke, and lays the 
foundations for the beginning of empire in the Southern States. 
English sailors explore Cape Cod. Ten years after' Frobisher 
had brought home his cargo of worthless stones from Labrador, 
Davis, the master mariner, is out exploring the waters west of 
Greenland ; and Henry Hudson, the English pilot who had dis- 
covered Hudson River, New York, for the Dutch, is retained 
by the English in 1610 to explore those waters west of Green- 
land where both Frobisher and Davis reported open passage. 

It is midsummer of 1610 when Hudson enters Hudson Straits. 
The ice jam of Ungava Bay, Labrador, has almost torn his ships' 
timbers apart and has set fear shivering like an aspen leaf among 
the crew. Old Juett, the mate, rages openly at Hudson for 
venturing such a frail ship on such a sea ; but when the ship 
anchors at the west end of Hudson Straits, five hundred miles 
from the Atlantic, there opens to view another sea, — a sea large 
as the Mediterranean, that, like the Mediterranean, may lead 
to another world. It is as dangerous to go back as forward ; 
and forward Hudson sails, southwestward for that sea Drake 
had cruised off California, the old mate's mutiny rumbling 
beneath decks like a volcano. South, southwestward, seven 
hundred miles sails Hudson, past the high rocks and airy 
cataracts of Richmond Gulf, past silence like the realms of 
death, on down where Hudson Bay rounds into James Bay 
and the shallows plainly show this is no way to a western sea, 
but a blind inlet, bowlder-strewn and mudd)' as swamps. 



HENRY HUDSON 



31 



When the ship runs aground and all hands must out to waist 
in ice water to pull her ashore as the tide comes in, Juett's rage 
bursts all bounds. As they toil, snow begins to fall. They are 
winter bound and storm bound in an unknown land. Half the 
crew are in open mutiny ; the other half build winter quarters 
and range the woods of James Bay for game. Of game there is 
plenty, but the rebels refuse to hunt. A worthless lad named 
Green, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London, 




AT EASTERN ENTRANCE TO HUDSON STRAITS 

turns traitor and talebearer, fomenting open quarrels till the 
commander threatens he will hang to the yardarm the first man 
guilty of disobedience. So passes the sullen winter. Provisions 
are short when the ship weighs anchor for England in June of 
161 1. With tears in his eyes, Hudson hands out the last rations. 
Ice blocks the way. Delay means starvation. If the crew were 
only half as large, Henry Green whispers to the mutineers, there 
would be food enough for passage home. The ice floes clear, 
the sails swing rattling to the breeze, but as Hudson steps on 
deck, the mutineers leap upon him like wolves. He is bound 
and thrown into the rowboat. With him are thrust his son and 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



eight others of the crew. The rope is cut, the rowboat jerks 
back adrift, and Hudson's vessel, manned by mutineers, drives 
before the wind. A few miles out, the mutineers lower sails to 
rummage for food. The little boat with the castaways is seen 
coming in pursuit. Guilt-haunted, the crew out with all sails 
and flee as from avenging ghosts. So passes Henry Hudson 
from the ken of all men, though Indian legend on the shores of 
Hudson Bay to this day maintains that the castaways landed 

north of Rupert and lived among 
the savages. 

Not less disastrous were Eng- 
lish efforts than French to colo- 
nize the New World. Up to 
1 6 10 Canada's story is, in the 
main, a record of blind heroism, 
dogged courage, death that re- 
fused to acknowledge defeat. 



Four hundred French vessels 
now yearly come to reap the 
harvest of the sea ; in and out 
among the fantastic rocks of 
Gaspe, pierced and pillared and scooped into caves by the 
wave wash, where fisher boats reap other kind of harvest, 
richer than the silver harvest of the sea, — harvest of beaver, and 
otter, and marten ; up the dim amber waters of the Saguenay, 
within the shadow of the somber gorge, trafficking baubles of 
bead and red print for furs, precious furs. Pontgrave, merchant 
prince, comes out with fifty men in 1600, and leaves si.xteen at 
Tadoussac, ostensibly as colonists, really as wood lopers to scatter 
through the forests and learn the haunts of the Indians. Font- 
grave comes back for men and furs in 1601, and comes again 
in 1603 with two vessels, accompanied by a soldier of fortune 
from the French court, who acts as geographer, — Samuel 
Champlain, now in his thirty-sixth year, with service in war to 
his credit and a journey across Spanish America. 




HUDSON COAT OF .ARMS 



CHAMPLAIN'S FIRST VOYAGE 



33 



The two vessels are barely as large as coastal schooners ; but 
shallow draft enables them to essay the Upper St. Lawrence far 
as Mount Royal, where Cartier had voyaged. Of the palisaded 
Indian fort not a vestige remains. War or plague has driven 
the tribe westward, but it is plain to the court geographer that, 
in spite of former failures, this land of rivers like lakes, and 
valleys large as European kingdoms, is fit for French colonists. 




THE I'ANIASIU' KiH'KS ol' CASPE 

When Champlain returns to France the King readily grants 
to Sieur de Monts a region roughly defined as anywhere between 
Pennsylvania and Labrador, designated Acadia. This region 
Sieur de Monts is to colonize in return for a monopoly of the 
fur trade. When other traders complain, De Monts quiets them 
by letting them all buy shares in the venture. With him are 
associated as motley a throng of treasure seekers as ever stam- 
peded for gold. There is Samuel Champlain, the court geogra- 
pher ; there is Pontgrave, the merchant prince, on a separate 



34 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



vessel with stores for the colonists. Pontgrave is to attend 
especially to the fur trading. There are the Baron de Poutrin- 
court and his young son, Biencourt, and other noblemen looking 
for broader domains in the New World ; and there are the usual 
riffraff of convicts taken from dungeons. Priests go to look after 
the souls of the Catholics, Huguenot ministers to care for the 
Protestants, and so valiantly do these dispute with tongues and 
fists that the sailors threaten to bury them in the same grave to 

see if they can lie 
at peace in death. 
Before the boats 
sight Acadia, it is 
early summer of 
1604. Pontgrave 
leaves stores with 
De Monts and sails 
on up to Tadous- 
sac. De Monts 
enters the little 
bay of St. Mary's, 
off the northwest 
corner of Nova 
Scotia, and sends 
his people ashore 
to explore. 

Signs of minerals 
they seek, rushing 
pellmell through the woods, gleeful as boys out of school. The 
forest is pathless and dense with June undergrowth, shutting out 
the sun and all sign of direction. The company scatters. Priest 
Aubry, more used to the cobble pavement of Paris than to the 
tangle of ferns, grows fatigued and drinks at a fresh-water rill. 
Going in the direction of his comrades' voices, he suddenly realizes 
that he has left his sword at the spring. The priest hurries back 
for the sword, loses his companions' voices, and when he would 
return, finds that he is hopelessly lost. The last shafts of 





SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN 



CHAMPLAIN'S FIRST VOYAGE 35 

sunlight disappear. The chill of night settles on the darkening 
woods. The priest shouts till he is hoarse and fires off his 
pistol ; but the woods muffle all sound but the scream of the 
wild cat or the uncanny hoot of the screech owl. Aubry wanders 
desperately on and on in the dark, his cassock torn to tatters 
by the brushw^ood, his way blocked by the undisturbed windfall 
of countless ages, . . . on and on, . . . till gray dawn steals through 
the forest and midday wears to a second night. 

Back at the boat were Avild alarm and wilder suspicions. 
Could the Huguenots, with whom Aubry had battled so violently, 
have murdered him ? De Monts scouted the notion as unworthy, 
but the suspicion clung in spite of fiercest denials. All night 
cannon were fired from the vessel and bonfires kept blazing on 
shore ; but two or three days passed, and the priest did not come. 

De Monts then sails on up the Bay of Fundy, which he calls 
French Bay, and by the merest chance sheers through an open- 
ing eight hundred feet wide to the right and finds himself in the 
beautiful lakelike Basin of Annapolis, broad enough to harbor 
all the French navy, with a shore line of wooded meadows like 
home-land parks. Poutrincourt is so delighted, he at once asks 
for an estate here and names the domain Port Royal. 

On up Fundy Bay sails De Monts, Samuel Champlain ever 
leaning over decks, making those maps and drawings which have 
come down from that early voyage. The tides carry to a broad 
river on the north side. It is St. John's Day. They call the 
river St. John, and wander ashore, looking vainly for more 
minerals. Westward is another river, known to-day as the 
Ste. Croix, the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. 
Dochet Island at its mouth seems to offer what to a soldier is 
an ideal site. A fort here could command either Fundy Bay or 
the upland country, which Indians say leads back to the St. 
Lawrence. Thinking more of fort than farms, De Monts plants 
his colony on Ste. Croix River, on an island composed mainly 
of sand and rock. 

While workmen labor to erect a fort on the north side, the 
pilot is sent back to Nova Scotia to prospect for minerals. As 



36 



CANADA: THP: EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



the vessel coasts near St. Mary's Bay, a black object is seen 
moving weakly along the shore. Sailors and pilot gaze in amaze- 
ment. A hat on the end of a pole is waved weakly from the 
beach. The men can scarcely believe their senses. It must be 
the priest, though sixteen days have passed since he disappeared. 
For two weeks Aubry had wandered, living on berries and roots, 
before he found his way back to the sea. 

Here, then, at last, is founded the first colony in Canada, a 
little palisaded fort of seventy-nine men straining longing eyes 



I ftCVRF. U \- POUT POVAI, E K LH NOT/ELLE. FKANCI ;'.--.V» r, /, vr.i fc. 




Jiy^sruLi'i 



PORT ROYAL OR ANNAPOLIS BASIN, 1609 

(From Lescarbot's map) 

at the sails of the vessel gliding out to sea ; for Pontgrave has 
taken one vessel up the St. Lawrence to trade, and Poutrincourt 
has gone back to France with the other for supplies. A worse 
beginning could hardly have been made. The island was little 
better than a sand heap. No hills shut out the cold winds that 
swept down the river bed from the north, and the tide carried 
in ice jam from the south. As the snow began to fall, padding 
the stately forests with a silence as of death, whitening the 
gaunt spruce trees somber as funereal mourners, the colonists 
felt the icy loneliness of winter in a forest chill their hearts. 



FOUNDING OF STE. CROIX 37 

Cooped up on the island by the ice, they did Httle hunting. 
Idleness gives time for repinings. Scurvy came, and before 
spring half the colonists had peopled the little cemetery outside 
the palisades. De Monts has had enough of Ste. Croix. When 
Pontgrave comes out with forty more men in June, De Monts 
prepares to move. Champlain had the preceding autumn sailed 
south seeking a better site ; and now with De Monts he sails 
south again far as Cape Cod, looking for a place to plant the 
capital of New France. It is amusing to speculate that Canada 
might have included as far south as Boston, if they had found a 
harbor to their liking ; but they saw nothing to compare with 
Annapolis Basin, narrow of entrance, landlocked, placid as a 
lake, with shores wooded like a park ; and back they cruised to 
Ste. Croix in August, to move the colony across to Nova Scotia, 
to Annapolis Basin of Acadia. While Champlain and Pontgrave 
volunteer to winter in the wilderness, De Monts goes home to 
look after his monopoly in France. 

What had De Monts to show for his two years' labor ? His 
company had spent what would be $20,000 in modern money, 
and all returns from fur trade had been swallowed up prolonging 
the colony. While Champlain hunted moose in the woods round 
Port Royal and Pontgrave bartered furs during the winter of 
of 1 605-1606, De Monts and Poutrincourt and the gay lawyer 
Marc Lescarbot fight for the life of the monopoly in Paris and 
point out to the clamorous merchants that the building of a 
French empire in the New World is of more importance than 
paltry profits. De Monts remains in France to stem the tide 
rising against him, while Poutrincourt and Lescarbot sail on 
\\\Q. Jonas with more colonists and supplies for Port Royal. 

Noon, July 27, 1606, the ship slips into the Basin of Annap- 
olis. To Lescarbot, the poet lawyer, the scene is a fairyland 
— the silver flood of the harbor motionless as glass, the wooded 
meadows dank with bloom, the air odorous of woodland smells, 
the blue hills rimming round the sky, and against the woods of 
the north shore the chapel spire and thatch roofs and slab walls 
of the little fort, the one oasis of life in a wilderness. 



38 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



As the sails rattled down and the anchor dropped, not a soul 
appeared from the fort. The gates were bolted fast. The yc>n<7s 
runs up the P"rench ensign. Then a canoe shoots out from the 
brushwood, paddled by the old chief Membertou. He signals 
back to the watchers behind the gates. Musketry shots ring 
out welcome. The ship's cannon answer, setting the waters 
churning. Trumpets blare. The gates fly wide and out marches 







BUILDINGS ON STE. CROIX ISLAND, 1613 
(From Champlain's diagram) 

the garrison — two lone Frenchmen. The rest, despairing of a 
ship that summer, have cruised along to Cape Breton to obtain 
supplies from French fishermen, whence, presently, come Pont- 
grave and Champlain, overjoyed to find the ship from France. 
Poutrincourt has a hogshead of wine rolled to the courtyard 
and all hands fitly celebrate. 

When Pontgrave carries the furs to France, Marc Lescarbot, 
the lawyer poet, proves the Hfe of the fort for this, the third 
winter of the colonists in Acadia. Poutrincourt and his son 



THE COT.ONISTS IN ACADIA 



39 



attend to trade. Champlain, as usual, commands ; and dull care 
is chased away by a thousand pranks of the Paris advocate. 
First, he sets the whole fort a-gardening", and Baron Poutrin- 
court forgets his Jiobh-ssc long enough to wield the hoc. Then 
Champlain must dam up the brook for a trout ]M)nd. The 
weather is almost mild as summer until January. 'The woods 
ring to many a merry picnic, fishing excursion, or moose hunt ; 
and when snow comes, the gay Lescarbot along with Champlain 
institutes a New World order of nobility — the Order of Good 
Times. Each day one of the number must cater to the mess- 
room table of the fort. This means keen hunting, keen rivalry 
for one to outdo another in the giving of sumptuous feasts. And 
all is done with the pomp and ceremony of a court banquet. 
When the chapel bell rings out noon hour and workers file to 
the long table, there stands the Master of the Revels, napkin on 
shoulder, chain of honor round his neck, truncheon in his hand. 
The gavel strikes, and there enter the Brotherhood, each bearing 
a steaming dish in his hand, — moose hump, beaver tail, bears' 
paws, wild fowl smelling" luscious as food smells only to out- 
of-doors men. Old Chief Membertou dines with the whites. 
Crouching round the wall behind the benches are the squaws 
and the children, to whom are flung many a tasty bit. 

At night time, round the hearth fire, when the roaring logs 
set the shadows dancing on the rough-timbered floor, the trun- 
cheon and chain of command are pompously transferred to the 
new Grand Master. It is all child's play, but it keeps the blood 
of grown men coursing hopefully. 

Or else Lescarbot perpetrates a newspaper, — a handwritten 
sheet giving the doings of the day, — perhaps in doggerel verse 
of his own composing. At other times trumpets and drums 
and pipes keep time to a dance. As all the warring clergymen, 
both Huguenot and Catholic, have died of scurvy, Lescarbot 
acts as priest on Sundays, and winds up the day with cheerful 
excursions up the river, or supper spread on the green. The 
lawyer's good spirits proved contagious. The French songs that 
rang through the woods of Acadia, keeping time to the chopper's 



40 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

labors, were the best antidote to scurvy ; but the wildwood 
happiness was too good to last. While L'Escarbot was writing 
his history of the new colonies a bolt fell from the blue. Instead of 
De Monts' vessel there came in spring a fishing smack with 
word that the grant of Acadia had been rescinded. No more 
money would be advanced. Poutrincourt and his son, Biencourt, 
resolved to come back without the support of a company ; but 
for the present all took sad leave of the little settlement — 
Poutrincourt, Champlain, L'Escarbot — and sailed with the 
Cape Breton fishing fleet for France, where they landed in 
October, 1607. 

Cartier, Roberval, La Roche, De Monts — all had failed to 
establish France in Canada; and as for England, Sir Humphrey's 
colonists lay bleaching skeletons at the bottom of the sea. 



CHAPTER III 

FROM 1(;07 TO 1635 

Though the monopoly had been rescinded, Poutrincourt set 
himself to interesting merchants in the fur trade of Acadia, 
and the French king- confirmed to him the grant of Port Royal. 
Yet it was 1610 before Baron Poutrincourt had gathered sup- 
plies to reestablish the colony, and an ominous cloud rose on 
the horizon, threatening his supremacy in the New World. 
Nearly all the merchants supporting him were either Huguenots 
or moderate Catholics. The Jesuits were all powerful at court, 
and were pressing for a part in his scheme. The Jesuit, Father 
Biard, was waiting at Bordeaux to join the ship. Poutrincourt 
evaded issues with such powerful opponents. He took on board 
Father La F'leche, a moderate, and gave the Jesuit the slip by 
sailing from Dieppe in February. 

To this cjuarrel there are two sides, as to all c|uarrels. The 
colony must now be supported by the fur trade ; and fur traders, 
world over, easily add to their profits by deeds which will not 
bear the censure of missionaries. On the other hand, to Pou- 
trincourt, the Jesuits meant divided authority ; and the most 
lawless scoundrel that ever perpetrated crimes in the fur trade 
could win over the favor of the priests by a hypocritical sem- 
blance of contrition at the confessional. Contrition never yet 
undid a crime ; and civil courts can take no cognizance of 
repentance. 

When the ships sailed in to Port Royal the little fort was 
found precisely as it had been left. Not even the furniture had 
been disturbed, and old Membertou, the Indian chief, welcomed 
the white men back with taciturn joy. Pere La Fleche assembles 
the savages, tells them the story of the Christian faith, then 
to the beat of drum and chant of " Te Deuni " receives, one 

41 



42 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

afternoon, twenty naked converts into the folds of the church. 
Membertou is baptized Henry, after the King", and all his 
frowsy squaws renamed after ladies of the most dissolute court 
in Christendom. 

Young Biencourt is to convey the ship back to France. He 
finds that the Queen Dowager has taken the Jesuits under her 
especial protection. Money enough to buy out the interests of 
the Huguenot merchants for the Jesuits has been advanced. 
Fathers Biard and Masse embark on The Grace of God with 
young Biencourt in January, 1611, for Port Royal. Almost at 
once the divided authority results in trouble. Coasting the Bay 
of Fundy, Biencourt discovers that Pontgrave's son has roused 
the hostility of the Indians by some shameless act. Young Bien- 
court is for hanging the miscreant to the yardarm, but the 
sinner gains the ear of the saints by woeful tale of penitence, 
and Father Biard sides with young Pontgrave. Instead of the 
gayety that reigned at Port Royal in L'Escarbot's day, now is 
sullen mistrust 

The Jesuits threaten young Biencourt with excommunication. 
Biencourt retaliates by threatening tlicui with exi)ulsion. For 
three months no religious services are held. The boat of 161 2 
brings out another Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet ; and \\\& Jonas, which 
comes in 1613 with fifty more men, — La Saussaye, commander, 
Fleury, captain, — has been entirely outfitted by friends of the 
Jesuits. By this time Baron de Poutrincourt, in France, was 
involved in debt beyond hope ; but his right to Port Royal was 
unshaken, and the Jesuits decided to steer south to seek a 
new site for their colony. 

Zigzagging along the coast of Maine, Captain Fleury cast 
anchor off Mount Desert at Frenchman's Bay. A cross was 
erected, mass celebrated, and four white tents pitched to house 
the people ; but the clash between civil and religious authority 
broke out again. The sailors would not obey the priests. P'leury 
feared mutiny. Saussaye, the commander, lost his head, and dis- 
order was ripening to disaster when there appeared over the sea 
the peak of a sail, — a sail topped by a little red ensign, the 



ARGALL OF VIRGINIA ATTACKS THE FRENCH 



43 



flag of the English, who claimed all this coast. And the sail was 
succeeded by decks with sixty manners, and hulls through whose 
ports bristled fourteen cannon. The newcomer was Samuel 
Argall of Virginia, whom the Indians had told of the French, 
now bearing down full sail, cannon leveled, to e.xpel these aliens 
from the domain of England's King. Drums were beating, 
trumpets blowing, fifes shrieking — there was no mistaking the 
purpose of the English ship. Saussaye, the French commander, 




PORT ROY.'\L 
(From Champlain's diagram) 

dashed for hiding in the woods. Captain Fleury screamed for 
some one, every one, any one, " to fire — fire " ; but the French 
sailors had imitated their commander and fled to the woods, while 
the poor Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet, fell weltering in blood from an 
English cannonade that swept the French decks bare and set all 
sails in flame. In the twinkling of an eye, Argall had captured 
men and craft. Fifteen of the French prisoners he set adrift 
in open boat, on the chance of their joining the French fishing 
fleet off Cape Breton. They were ultimately carried to St. Malo. 



44 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

The rest of the prisoners, inckiding Father Biard, he took back 
to Virginia, where the commission held from the French King 
assured them honorable treatment in time of peace ; but Argall 
was promptly sent north again with his prisoners, and three 
frigates to lay waste every vestige of French settlement from 
Maine to St. John. Mount Desert, the ruins of Ste. Croix, the 
fortress beloved by Poutrincourt at Port Royal, the ripening 
wheat of Annapolis Basin — all fed the flames of Argall's zeal; 
and young Biencourt's wood runners, watching from the forests 
the destruction of all their hopes, the ruin of all their plans, 
ardently begged their young commander to parley with Argall 
that they might obtain the Jesuit Biard and hang him to the 
highest tree. To /lis coming they attributed all the woes. It 
was as easy for them to believe that the Jesuit had piloted the 
English destroyer to Port Royal, as it had been ten years before 
for the Catholics to accuse the Huguenots of murdering the lost 
priest Aubry ; and there was probably as much truth in one 
charge as the other. 

So fell Port Royal ; but out round the ruins of Port Royal, 
where the little river runs down to the sea past Goat Island, 
young Biencourt and his followers took to the woods — the first 
of that race of bush lopers, half savages, half noblemen, to render 
France such glorious service in the New World. 

When De Monts lost the monopoly of furs in Acadia, Cham- 
plain, the court geographer, had gone home from Port Royal to 
France. De Monts now succeeds in obtaining a fresh monopoly 
for one year on the St. Lawrence, and sends out two ships in 
1608 under his old friends, Pontgrave, who is to attend to the 
bartering, Champlain, who is to explore. With them come some 
of the colonists from Port Royal, among others Louis Hebert, 
the chemist, first colonist to become farmer at Quebec, and 
Abraham Martin, whose name was given to the famous plains 
where Wolfe and Montcalm later fought. 

Pontgrave arrived at the rendezvous of Tadoussac early in 
June. Here he found Basque fishermen engaged in the peltry 



CHAMPLAIN ON THE ST. LAWRENCE 



45 



traffic with Indians from Labrador. When Pontgrave read his 
commission interdicting" all ships but those of De Monts from 
trade, the Basques poured a fusillade of musketry across his 
decks, killed one man, wounded two, then boarded his vessel 
and trundled his cannon ashore. So much for royal commissions 
and monopoly ! 

At this stage came Champlain on the second boat. Two 
vessels were overstrong for the Basques. They quickly came to 







TADOUSSAC 
(From Champlain's map) 

terms and decamped. Champlain steered his tin)- craft on up 
the silver flood of the St. Lawrence to that Cape Diamond 
where Cartier's men had gathered worthless stones. Between 
the high cliff and the river front, not far from the market place 
of Quebec City to-day, workmen began clearing the woods for 
the site of the French habitation. The little fort was palisaded, 
of course, with a moat outside and cannon commanding the river. 
The walls were loopholed for musketry ; and inside ran a gallery 
to serve as lookout and defense. Houses, barracks, garden, and 
fresh-water supply completed the fort. One day, as Champlain 



46 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

worked in his garden, a colonist begged to speak with him, 
Champlain stepped into the woods. The man then bkirted out 
how a conspiracy was on foot, instigated by the Basques, to 
assassinate Champlain, seize the fort, and stab any man who 
dared to resist. One of Pontgrave's small boats lay at anchor. 
Champlain sent for the pilot, told him the story of the plot, 
gave him two bottles of wine, and bade him invite the ringleaders 
on board that night to drink. The ruse worked. The ringleaders 
were handcuffed, the other colonists awakened in the fort and 
told that the plot had been crushed. The body of Duval, the 
chief plotter, in pay of the Basques, swung as warning from a 
gibbet ; and his head was exposed on a pike to the birds of the 
air. Though Pontgrave left a garrison of twenty-eight when he 
sailed for France, less than a dozen men had survived the plague 
of scurvy when the ships came back to Champlain in 1609. 

Champlain's part had been to explore. Now that his fort was 
built, he planned to do this by allying himself with the Indians, 
who came down to trade at Quebec. These were the Hurons 
and Montaignais, the former from the Ottawa, the latter from 
Labrador. Both waged ceaseless war on the Iroquois south of 
the St. Lawrence. After bartering their furs for weapons from 
the traders, the allied tribes would set out on the warpath 
against the Iroquois. In June, Champlain and eleven white men 
accompanied the roving warriors. 

The way led from the St. Lawrence south, up the River 
Richelieu. Champlain's boat was a ponderous craft ; and when 
the shiver of the sparkling rapids came with a roar through the 
dank forest, the heavy boat had to be sent back to Quebec. 
Adopting the light birch canoe of the Indian, Champlain went 
on, accompanied by only two white men. Of Indians, there were 
twenty-four canoes with sixty warriors. For the first part of 
the voyage night was made hideous by the grotesque war dances 
of the braves lashing themselves to fury by scalp raids in pan- 
tomime, or by the medicine men holding solemn converse with 
the demons of earth ; the tent poles of the medicine lodge 
rocked as if by wind, while eldritch howls predicted victory. 



CHAMPLAIN AND THE IROQUOIS 



47 



Then the long line of silent canoes had spread out on that 
upland lake named after Champlain, the heavily forested Adi- 
rondacks breaking the sky line on one side, the Green Mountains 
rolling away on the other. Caution now marked all advance. 
The Indians paddled only at night, withdrawing to the wooded 
shore through the morning mist to hide in the undergrowth for 
the day. This was the land of the Iroquois. 

On July 29, as the invaders were stealing silently along the 
west shore near Crown Point at night about ten o'clock, there 
were seen by the starlight, coming over the water with that 



m^mr^ 



?>4i 






s-^J^ 






IP-I 



vV 







'^-^^^^-^ 




DEFE.4T OF THE IROQUOIS 
(From Champlain's drawing) 

peculiar galloping motion of paddlers dipping together, the Iro- 
quois war canoes. Each side recognized the other, and the 
woods rang with shouts ; but gathering clouds and the mist 
rising from the river screened the foes from mutual attack, 
though the night echoed to shout and countershout and chal- 
lenge and abuse. Through the half light Champlain could see 
that the Iroquois were working like beavers erecting a barricade 
of logs. The assailants kept to their canoes under cover of 
bull-hide shields till daylight, when Champlain buckled on his 
armor — breastplate, helmet, thigh pieces — and landing, advanced. 
There were not less than two hundred Iroquois. Outnumbering 
the Hurons three times over, they uttered a jubilant whoop and 



48 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

came on at a rush. Champlain and his two white men took aim. 
The foremost chiefs dropped in their tracks. Terrified by " the 
sticks that thundered and spat fire," the Iroquois fell back in 
amaze, halted, then fled. The victory was complete ; but it left 
as a legacy to New France the undying enmity of the Iroquois. 

When Champlain came out from France in 1610, he would 
have repeated the raid ; but a fight with invading Iroquois at 
the mouth of the Richelieu delayed him, and the expiration of 
De Monts' monopoly took him back to France. 

In 161 1 trade was free to all comers. Fur traders flocked to 
the St. Lawrence like birds of passage. The only way to secure 
furs for De Monts was to go higher up the river beyond Quebec ; 
and ascending to Montreal, Champlain built a factory called 
Place Royale, with a wall of bricks to resist the ice jam. This 
was the third French fort Champlain helped to found in Canada. 

Presently, on his tracks to Montreal, came a flock of free 
traders. When the Hurons come shooting down the foamy 
rapids — here, a pole-shove to avoid splitting canoes on a rock in 
mid-rush ; there, a dexterous whirl from the trough of a back wash 
— the fur traders fire off their guns in welcome. The Hurons are 
suspicious. What means it, these white men, coming in such num- 
bers, firing off their "sticks that thunder".? At midnight they 
come stealthily to Charaplain's lodge to complain. Peltries and 
canoes, the Indians transfer themselves above the rapids, and 
later conduct Champlain down those same white whirlpools to 
the uneasy amaze of the explorer. 

It is clear to Champlain he must obtain royal patronage to 
stem the boldness of these free traders. In France he obtains 
the favor of the Bourbons ; and he obtains it more generously 
because the world of Paris has gone agog about a fabulous tale 
that sets the court by the ears. From the first Champlain has 
encouraged young Frenchmen to winter with the Indian hunters 
and learn the languages. Brule is with them now. Nicholas 
Vignau has just come back from the Ottawa with a fairy story 
of a marvelous voyage he has made with the Indians through 



CHAMPLAIN EXPLORES THE OTTAWA 49 

the forests to the Sea of the North — the sea where Henry Hud- 
son, the Englishman, had perished. As the romance gains the 
ear of the pubhc, the young man waxes eloquent in detail, and 
tells of the number of Englishmen living there. Champlain is 
ordered to follow this exploration up. 

May, 161 3, he is back at Montreal, opposite that island named 
St. Helen, after the frail girl who became his wife, preparing to 
ascend the Ottawa with four white men — among them Vignau. 
What Vignau's sensations were, one may guess. The vain youth 
had not meant his love of notoriety to carry him so far ; and he 
must have known that every foot of the way led him nearer 
detection ; but the liar is always a gambler with chance. Mis- 
hap, bad w^eather, Indian war — might drive Champlain back. 
Vignau assumed bold face. 

The path followed was that river trail up the Ottawa which 
was to become the highway of empire's westward march for two 
and a half centuries. Mount Royal is left to the rear as the 
voyageurs traverse the Indian trail through the forests along the 
rapids to that launching place named after the patron saint of 
French voyageur — Ste. Anne's. The river widens into the silver 
expanse of Two Mountains Lake, rimmed to the sky line by the 
vernal hills, with a silence and solitude over all, as when sunlight 
first fell on face of man. Here the eagle utters a lonely scream 
from the top of some blasted pine ; there a covey of ducks, 
catching sight of the coming canoes, dive to bottom, only to 
reappear a gunshot away. Where the voyageurs land for their 
nooning, or camp at nightfall, or pause to gum the splits in 
their birch canoes, the forest in the full flush of spring verdure 
is a fairy woods. Against the elms and the maples leafing out 
in airy tracery that reveals the branches bronze among the bud- 
ding green, stand the silver birches, and the somber hemlocks, 
and the resinous pines. Upbursting from the mold below is 
another miniature forest — a forest of ferns putting out the hairy 
fronds that in another month will be above the height of a man. 
Overhead, like a flame of fire, flashes the scarlet tanager with 
his querulous call; or the oriole flits from branch to branch, 



50 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



fluting his springtime notes ; or the yellow warbler balances on 
topmost spray to sing his crisp love song on the long journey 
north to nest on Hudson Bay. And over all and in all, intangible 
as light, intoxicating as wine, is the tang of the clear, unsullied, 
crystal air, setting the blood coursing with new life. Little 
wonder that Brule, and Vignau, and other young men whom 
Champlain sent to the woods to learn wood lore, became so 
enamored of the life that they never returned to civilization. 

Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids. Indians 
and voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on 
back with straps across foreheads, and amble away over the 
portages at that voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half run. 
So the rapids of Carillon and Long Saut are ascended. Night time 
is passed on some sandy shore on a bed under the stars, or under 
the canoes turned upside down. Tents are erected only for the 
commander, Champlain ; and at day dawn, while the tips of the 
trees are touched with light and the morning mist is smoking 
up from the river shot with gold, canoes are again on the water 
and paddle blades tossing the waves behind. 

The Laurentian Hills now roll from the river in purpling folds 
like fields of heather. The Gatineau is passed, winding in on the 
right through dense forests. On the left, flowing through the roll- 
ing sand hills, and joining the main river just where the waters 
fall over a precipice in a cataract of spray, is the Rideau River 
with its famous falls resembling the white folds of a wind-blown 
curtain. Then the voyageurs have swept round that wooded cliff 
known as Parliament Hill, jutting out in the river, and there breaks 
on view a wall of water hurtling down in shimmering floods at the 
Chaudiere Falls. The high cliff to the left and countercurrent 
from the falls swirl the canoes over on the right side to the 
sandy flats where the lumber piles to-day defile the river. Here 
boats are once more hauled up for portage — a long portage, nine 
miles, all the way to the modern town of Aylmer, where the river 
becomes wide as a lake, Lake Du Chene of the oak forests. Here 
camp for the night was made, and leaks in the canoes mended 
with resin, round fires gleaming red as an angry eye across the 



CHAMPLAIN WITH THE INDIANS 



51 



darkening waters, while tlie prowling wild cats and lynx, which 
later gave such good hunting in these forests that the adjoining 
rapids became known as the Chats, sent their unearthly screams 
shivering through the darkness. 

Somewhere near Allumette Isle, Champlain came to an Indian 
settlement of the Ottawa tribe. He camped to ask for guides 
to go on. Old Chief Tessouat holds solemn powwow, passing 
the peace pipe round from hand to hand in silence, before the 
warriors rise to answer Champlain. Then with the pompous 
gravity of Abraham dickering with the desert tribes, they warn 
Champlain it is unsafe to go farther. Beyond the Ottawa is the 
Nipissing, where dwell the Sorcerer Indians — a treacherous 
people. Beyond the Nipissing is the great Fresh Water Sea of 
the Hurons. They will grant Champlain canoes, but warn him 
against the trip. Later the interpreter comes with word they 
have changed their minds. Champlain must not go on. It is too 
dangerous. Attack would involve war. 

"What," demanded Champlain, rushing into the midst of the 
council tent, " not go .'' Why, my young man, here "■ — pointing 
to Vignau — " has gone to that country and found no danger." 

What Vignau thought at that stage is not told. The Indians 
turned on him in fury. 

" Nicholas, (X\(S. yon ^z.y yoji had visited the Nipissings .'' " 

Vignau hems and haws, and stammers, " Yes." 

" Liar," roars the chief. " You slept here every night, and if 
you went to the Nipissings, you went in a dream." Then to 
Champlain, " Let him be tortured." 

Champlain took the fellow to his own tent. Vignau reiterated 
his story. Champlain took him back to the council. The Indians 
jeered his answers and tore the story he told to tatters, showing 
Champlain how utterly wrong Vignau's descriptions were. 

That night, on promise of forgiveness, Vignau fell on his knees 
and confessed the imposture to Champlain. When the fur canoes 
came down the Ottawa to trade at Montreal, Champlain accom- 
panied them to the St. Lawrence, and sailed for France. His 
exploration had been an ignominious failure. 



52 CANADA; THP: EMPIRE OE THE NORTH 

Champlain was ever Knight of the Cross as well as explorer. 
He longed with the zeal of a missionary to reclaim the Indians 
from savagery, and at last raised funds in France to pay the 
expense of bringing four or five Recollets — a branch of the 
Franciscan Friars — to Quebec in May of 1615. With the peaked 
hood thrown back, the gray garb roped in at the waist, the bare 
feet protected only by heavy sandals, the Recollets landed at 
Quebec, and with cannon booming, white men all on bended 
knee, held service before the amazed savages. 

Of the Recollets, it was agreed that Joseph le Caron should 
go west to the Hurons of the Sweet Water Sea. Accompanied 
by a dozen Frenchmen, the friar ascended the Ottawa in July, 
passed that Allumette Island where Vignau's lie had been con- 
fessed, and proceeded westward to the land of the Hurons. 
Nine days later Champlain followed with two canoes, ten Indians, 
and Etienne Brule, his interpreter. In order to hold the ever- 
lasting loyalty of the Hurons and Algonquins in Canada, 
Champlain had pledged them that the French would join their 
twenty-five hundred warriors in a great invasion of the Iroquois 
to the south. It was to be a war not of aggression but of 
defense ; for the Five Nations of the Iroquois in New York 
state had harried the Canadian tribes like wolves raiding a 
sheep pen. No Frenchman cultivating his farm patch on the 
St. Lawrence was safe from ambuscade ; no hunter afield secure 
from a chance war party. 

Any tourist crossing Canada to-day can trace Champlain's 
voyage. Where the rolling tide of the Ottawa forks at Mattawa, 
there comes in on the west side, through dense forests and cedar 
swamps, a river amber-colored with the wood-mold of centuries. 
This is the Mattawa. Up the Mattawa Champlain pushed his 
canoes westward, up the shining flood of the river yellow as 
gold where the waters shallow above the pebble bottom. Then 
the gravel grated keels. The shallows became weed-grown 
swamps that entangled the paddles and hid voyageur from voy- 
ageur in reeds the height of a man ; and presently a portage over 
rocks slippery as ice leads to a stream flowing westward, opening 



DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT LAKES 



53 



on a low-lying, clay-colored lake — the country of the Nipissings, 
with whom Champlain pauses to feast and hear tales of witch- 
craft and demon lore, that gave them the name of Sorcerers. 

In a few sleeps — they tell him — he will reach the Sweet 
Water Sea. The news is welcome ; for the voyageurs are down 
to short rations, and launch eagerly westward on the stream 
draining Nipissing Lake — French River. This is a tricky little 
stream in whose sands lie buried the bodies of countless French 
voyageurs. It is more dangerous going zvith rapids than against 
them ; for the hastening current is sometimes an undertow, 
which sweeps the canoes into the rapids before the roar of the 
waterfall has given warning. And the country is barren of game. 

As they cross the portages, Champlain's men are glad to snatch 
at the raspberry and cranberry bushes for food ; and their night- 
time meal is dependent on chance fishing. Indian hunters are met, 
— three hundred of them, — the Staring Hairs, so named from 
the upright posture of their headdress tipped by an eagle quill ; 
and again Champlain is told he is very near the Inland Sea. 

It comes as discoveries nearly always come — his finding of 
the Great Lakes ; for though Joseph Le Caron, the missionary, 
had passed this way ten days ago, the zealous priest never paused 
to explore and map the region. You are paddling down the 
brown, forest-shadowed waters — long lanes of water like canals 
through walls of trees silent as sentinels. Suddenly a change 
almost imperceptible comes. Instead of the earthy smell of the 
forest mold in your nostrils is the clear tang of sun-bathed, 
water-washed rocks; and the sky begins to swim, to lose itself 
at the horizon. There is no sudden bursting of a sea on your 
view. The river begins to coil in and out among islands. The 
amber waters have become sheeted silver. You wind from island 
to island, islands of pink granite, islands with no tree but one 
lone blasted pine, islands that are in themselves forests. There 
is no end to these islands. They are not in hundreds ; they are 
in thousands. Then you see the spray breaking over the reefs, 
and there is its sky line. You are not on a river at all. You are 
on an inland sea. You have been on the lake for hours. One 



54 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

can guess how Champlain's men scrambled from island to island, 
and fished for the rock bass above the deep pools, and ran along 
the water line of wave-dashed reefs, wondering vaguely if the 
wind wash were the ocean tide of the Western Sea. 

But Champlain's Huron guides had not come to find a West- 
ern Sea. With the quick choppy stroke of the Indian paddler 
they were conveying him down that eastern shore of Lake Huron 
now known as Georgian Bay, from French River to Parry Sound 
and Midland and Penetang. Where these little towns to-day 
stand on the hillsides was a howling wilderness of forest, with 
never a footprint but the zigzagging trail of the Indians back 
from Georgian Bay to what is now Lake Simcoe. 

Between these two shores lay the stamping grounds of the 
great Huron tribe. How numerous were they .'' Records differ. 
Certainly at no time more numerous than thirty thousand souls 
all told, including children. Though they yearly came to Montreal 
for trade and war, the Hurons were sedentary, living in the long 
houses of bark inclosed by triple palisades, such as Cartier had 
seen at Hochelaga almost a century before. 

Champlain followed his supple guides along the wind-fallen 
forest trail to the Huron villages. Here he found the missionary. 
One can guess how the souls of these two heroes burned as the 
deep solemn chant of the Tc Denni for the first time rolled 
through the forests of Lake Huron. 

But now Champlain must to business ; and his business is 
war. Brule and twelve Indians are sent like the carriers of the 
fiery cross in the Highlands of Scotland to rally tribes of the 
Susquehanna to join the Hurons against the Iroquois. A wild 
war dance is held with mystic rites in the lodges of the Hurons ; 
and the braves set out with Champlain from Lake Simcoe for 
Lake Ontario by way of Trent River. As they near what is 
now New York state, buckskin is flung aside, the naked bodies 
painted and greased, and the trail shunned for the pathless 
woods off the beaten track where the Indians glide like beasts 
of prey through the frost-tinted forest. 



WAR WITH THE IROQUOIS 



55 



October 9 they suddenly come on some Onondagas fishing, and 
they begin torturing their captives by cutting off a girl's finger, 
when Champlain commands them to desist. Presently the forest 
opens to a farm clearing where the Iroquois are harvesting their 
corn. Spite of all Champlain could do, the wild Hurons uttered 
their war cry and rushed the field, but the Iroquois turned on 







THE ONONDAGA FORT 
(From Champlain's diagram) 

the rabble and drove them back to the woods. Champlain was 
furious. They should have waited for Brule to come with their 
allies ; and the foolish attack had only served to forewarn the 
enemy. He frankly told the Hurons if they were going to fight 
under Jiis command, they must fight as white men fight ; and he 
set them to building a platform from which marksmen could 
shoot over the walls of the Iroquois town. But the admonitions 



56 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



fell on frenzied ears. No sooner was the command to advance 
given than the Hurons broke from cover like maniacs, easy marks 
for the javelin throwers inside the walls, and hurled themselves 
against the Irocjuois palisades in blind fury, making more din with 
yelling than woe with shots. Boiling water poured from the 
galleries inside drove the braves back from the walls, and the 



QVEBECa 




VIEW (^F QUEBIX 
(From Champlain's plan) 

poisoned barb of the Iroquois arrows pursued their flight. A score 
fell wounded, among them Champlain with an arrow in his knee- 
cap. The flight became panic fast and furious, with the wounded 
carried on wicker stretchers whose every jolt added agony to pain. 
As for Brule, he arrived with the allies only to find that the 
Hurons had Red, and here was he, alone in a hostile land, with 
Iroquois warriors rampant as molested wasps. In the swift 
retreat off the trail Brule lost his way. He was without food 



CONFLICTING INTERESTS IN NEW FRANCE 57 

or powder, and had to choose between starvation or surrender 
to the Iroquois. Throwing down his weapons, he gave himself 
up to what he knew would be certain torture. Had he winced 
or whined as they tore the nails from his fingers and the hair 
from his head, the Iroquois would probably have brained him on 
the spot for a poltroon ; but the young man, bound to a stake, 
pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure. 
The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and 
took him with them in their wanderings for three years. 

The Hurons had promised to convey Champlain back down 
the St. Lawrence to Quebec, but the defeat had caused loss of 
prestige. The man "with the stick that thundered" was no 
more invulnerable to wounds than they. They forgot their 
promises and invented excuses for not proceeding to Quebec. 
Champlain wintered with the hunters somewhere north of Lake 
Ontario, and came down the Ottawa with the fur canoes the ne.xt 
summer. He was received at Quebec as one risen from the dead. 

While Champlain had been exploring. New France had not 
prospered as a colony. Royal patron after royal patron sold 
the monopoly to fresh hands, and each new master appointed 
Champlain viceroy. The fur trade merchants could pay forty 
per cent dividends, but could do nothing to advance settlement. 
Less than one hundred people made up the population of New 
France ; and these were torn asunder by jealousies. Huguenot 
and Catholic were opposed ; and when three Jesuits came to 
Quebec, Jesuits and Recollets distrusted each other. 

Madam Champlain joined her husband at Quebec, in 1620, to 
stay for four years, and that same year Champlain built himself 
a new habitation — the famous Castle of St. Louis on the cliff 
above the first dwelling. Louis Hebert, the apothecary of Port 
Royal, is now a farmer close to the Castle of Quebec ; and the 
wife of Abraham Martin has given birth to the first white child 
born in New France. 

Now came a revolutionary change. Cardinal Richelieu was 
virtual ruler of France. He quickly realized that the monopolists 



58 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

were sucking the lifeblood of the colony in furs and were 
giving nothing in return to the country. In 1627, under the 
great cardinal's patronage, the Company of One Hundred Asso- 
ciates was formed. In this company any of the seaport traders 
could buy shares. Indeed, they were promised patent of nobility 
if they did buy shares. Exclusive monopoly of furs was given 
to the company from Florida to Labrador. In return the Asso- 
ciates were to send two ships yearly to Canada. Before 1643 
they were to bring out four thousand colonists, support them 
for three years, and give them land. In each settlement were to 
be supported three priests ; and, to prevent discord, Huguenots 
were to be banished from New France. 

To Champlain it must have seemed as if the ambition of his life 
were to be realized. Just when the sky seemed clearest the bolt fell. 

Early in April, 1628, the Associates had dispatched colonists 
and stores for Quebec ; but war had broken out between France 
and England. Gervais Kirke, an English Huguenot of Dieppe, 
France, who had been put under the ban by Cardinal Richelieu, 
liad rallied the merchants of London to fit out privateers to 
wage war on New France. The vessels were commanded by the 
three sons, Thomas, Louis, and David ; and to the Kirkes rallied 
many Huguenots banished from France. 

Quebec was hourly looking for the annual ships, when one 
morning in July two men rushed breathless through the woods 
and up the steep rock to Castle St. Louis with word that an 
Enghsh fleet of six frigates lay in hiding at Tadoussac, ready 
to pounce on the French ! Later came other messengers — 
Indians, fishermen, traders — confirming the terrible news. 
Then a Basque fisherman arrives with a demand from Kirke for 
the keys to the fort. Though there is no food inside the walls, 
less than fifty pounds of ammunition in the storehouse, and not 
enough men to man the guns, Champlain hopes against hope, 
and sends the Basque fisherman back with suave regrets that 
he cannot comply with Monsieur Kirke's polite request. Que- 
bec's one chance lay in the hope that the French vessels might 



THE ENGLISH TAKE QUEBEC 



59 



slip past the English frigates by night. Days wore on to weeks, 
weeks to months, and a thousand rumors filled the air; but no ships 
came. The people of Quebec Avere now reduced to diet of nuts 
and corn. Then came Indian runners with word that the French 
ships had been waylaid, boarded, scuttled, and sunk. Leaded to 
the water line with booty, the English privateers had gone home. 
For that winter Quebec lived on such food as the Indians 
brought in from the woods. By the summer of 1629 men, women, 
and children were grubbing for roots, fishing for food, ranging the 




QUEBEC 
(From Champlain's map) 

rocks for berries. There are times when the only thing to do is — 
do nothing ; and it is probably the hardest task a brave man ever 
has. When the English fleet came back in July Champlain had a 
ragamuffin, half-starved retinue of precisely sixteen men. Yet he 
haggled for such terms that the English promised to convey the 
prisoners to France. On July 20, for the first time in history, the 
red flag of England blew to the winds above the heights of Quebec. 



But New France was only a pawn to the gamesters of French 
and English diplomacy. Peace was proclaimed ; and for the 



6o CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

sake of receiving $200,000 as dowry due his French wife, 
Charles of England restored to France the half continent which 
the Kirkes had captured, David Kirke receiving the paltry honor 
of a title as compensation for the loss. Champlain was back in 
Quebec by 1633 ; but his course had run. Between Christmas 
eve and Christmas morning, in 1635, the brave Soldier of the 
Cross, the first knight of the Canadian wildwoods, passed from 
the sphere of earthly life — a life without a stain, whether 
among the intriguing courtiers of Paris or in the midst of naked 
license in the Indian camp. 



CHAPTER IV 

FROM lO.Sn TO 1()G6 

When Port Royal fell before Argall, it will be remembered, 
young Biencourt took to the woods with his French bush lopers 
and Indian followers of Nova Scotia. The farms and fort of 
Annapolis Basin granted to his father by special patents lay in 
ruins. Familiar with the woods as the English buccaneer, who 
had destroyed the fort, was with his ship's cabin, Biencourt 
withdrew to the southwest corner of Nova Scotia, where he 
built a rude stronghold of logs and slabs near the modern Cape 
Sable. Here he could keep in touch with the French fishermen 
off Cape Breton, and also traffic with the Indians of the mainland. 

With Biencourt was a young man of his own age, boon com- 
rade, kindred spirit, who had come to Port Royal a boy of four- 
teen, in 1606, in the gay days of Marc L'Escarbot — Charles de 
La Tour. Sea rovers, bush lopers, these two could bid defiance 
to English raiders. Whether Biencourt died in 1623 or went 
home to France is unknown ; but he deeded over to his friend, 
Charles de La Tour, all possessions in Acadia. 

And now England again comes on the scene. By virtue of 
Cabot's discovery and Argall's conquest, the King of England, 
in 162 1, grants to Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, 
all of Acadia, renamed Nova Scotia — New Scotland. By way 
of encouraging emigration, the order of Nova Scotia Baronets is 
created, a title being granted to those who subscribe to the 
colonization company. 

Sir William Alexander's colonists shun the French bush lopers 
under Charles de La Tour down at Fort St. Louis on Cape 
Sable. The seventy Scotch colonists go on up the Annapolis 
Basin and build their fort four miles from old Port Royal. How 
did they pass the pioneer years — these Scotch retainers of the 

61 



62 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Nova Scotia Baronets ? Report among the French fishing fleet 
says thirty died of scurvy ; but of definite information not a ves- 
tige remains. The annals of these colonists are as completely lost 
to history as the annals of the lost Roanoke colony in Virginia. 

Under the same English patent Lord Ochiltree lands English 
colonists in Cape Breton, the grand summer rendezvous of the 
French fishermen; but two can play at Argall's game of raids. 

French seamen swoop 
down on Ochiltree's 
colony, capture fifty, 
destroy the settlement, 
and run up the white 
flag of France in place 
of the red standard of 
England. 

Charles de La Tour 
with his Huguenots 
hides safely ensconced 
behind his slab palisades 
with the swarthy faces 
of half a hundred Indian 
retainers lighted up by 
the huge logs at blaze 
on the hearth. Charles 
de La Tour takes coun- 
sel with himself. English 
at Port Royal, English 
at Cape Breton, English on the mainland at Boston, English ships 
passing and repassing his lone lodge in the wilderness, he will 
be safer, will Charles de La Tour, with wider distance between 
himself and the foe ; and he will take more peltries where there 
are fewer traders. Still keeping his fort in Nova Scotia, La 
Tour goes across Fundy Bay and builds him a second, stronger 
fort on St. John River, New Brunswick, near where Carleton 
town stands to-day. 

Then two things happened that upset all plans. 




SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER 



FRAYS BETWEEN LA TOUR AND CHARNISAY 63 

The Hundred Associates are given <:?// Canada — Quebec and 
Acadia. Founded by Cardinal Richelieu, the Hundred Asso- 
ciates are violently Catholic, violently anti-Protestant. Charles 
de La Tour need expect no favors, if indeed the grant that he 
holds from Biencourt be not assailed. Double reason for movinsr 
the most of his possessions across Fundy Bay to St, John River. 

Then the Englishmen, under the Kirke brothers, capture 
Quebec. As luck or ill luck will have it, among the French 
captured from the French ships of the Hundred Associates 
down at Tadoussac, is Claude de La Tour, the father of Charles. 
Claude de La Tour was a Protestant. This and his courtly 
manner and his noble birth commended him to the English 
court. What had France done for Claude de La Tour .'' Placed 
him under the ban on accoimt of his religion. 

Claude de La Tour promptly became a British subject, re- 
ceived the title Baronet of Nova Scotia with enormous grants 
of land on St. John River, New Brunswick, married an English 
lady in waiting to the Queen, and. sailed with three men-of-war 
for Nova Scotia to win over his son Charles. No writer like Marc 
Lescarbot was present to describe the meeting between father 
and son ; but one can guess the stormy scene,; — the war between 
love of country and love of father, the guns of the father's vessels 
pointing at the son's fort, the guns of the son's fort pointing at 
the father's vessels. The father's arguments were strong. What 
had France done for the La Tours ? By siding with England 
they would receive safe asylum in case of persecution and enor- 
mous grants of land on St. John River. But the son's arguments 
were stronger. The father must know from his English bride — 
maid in waiting to the English Queen — that England had no 
intentions of keeping her newly captured possessions in Canada, 
but had already decided to trade them back to France for a 
dowry to the English Queen. If Canada were given back to 
France, what were English grants in New Brunswick worth .? 
" If those who sent you think me capable of betraying my coun- 
try even at the prayer of my father, they are mightily mistaken," 
thundered the young man, ordering his gunners to their places. 



64 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



" I don't purchase honors by crime ! I don't undervalue the 
offer ©f England's King; but the King of France is just as able 
to reward me ! The King of France has confided the defense of 
Acadia to me; and I'll defend it to my last breath." 

Stung by his son's rebuke, the elder La Tour retired to his 
ship, wrote one more unavailing appeal, then landed his mariners 
to rush the fort. But the rough bush lopers inside the palisades 
were expert marksmen. Their raking cross fire kept the Eng- 
lish at a distance, and the father could neither drive nor coax 

his men to the sticking 
point of courage to scale 
palisades in such an un- 
natural war. Claude de 
La Tour was now in an 
unenviable plight. He 
dare not go back to 
France a traitor. He 
could not go back to 
England, having failed 
to win the day. The 
son built him a dwelling 
outside the fort ; and 
there this famous court- 
ier of two great nations, 
with his noble wife, re- 
tired to pass the end 
of his days in a wildwood wilderness far enough from the gaudy 
tinsel of courts. The fate of both husband and wife is unknown. 




1 TAP DK SABLE 



Scale:- G miles to 1 Inch 



MAP SHOWING LA TOUR S POSSESSIONS 
IN ACADIA 



Charles de La Tour's predictions were soon verified. The 
Treaty of St.-Germain-en-Laye, in 1632, gave back all Canada 
to France ; and the young man's loyalty was rewarded by the 
French King confirming the father's English patent to the lands 
of St. John River, New Brunswick. Perhaps he expected more. 
He certainly wanted to be governor of Acadia, and may have 
looked for fresh title to Port Royal, which Biencourt had deeded 



FRAYS BETWEEN LA TOUR AND CHARNISAY 65 

to him. His ambition was embittered. Cardinal Richelieu of 
the Hundred Associates had his own favorites t(; look after. 
Acadia is divided into three provinces. Over all as governor is 
Isaac Razilli, chief of the Hundred Associates. La Tour holds 
St. John. One St. Denys is given Cape Breton ; and Port Royal, 
the best province of all, falls to Sieur d'Aulnay de Charnisay, 
friend and relative of Richelieu ; and when Razilli dies in 1635, 
Charnisay, with his strong intiuence at court, easily secures the 
dead man's patents with all land grants attached. Charnisay 
becomes governor of Acadia. 

For a second time La Tour is thwarted. Things are turning- 
out as his father had foretold. Who began the border warfare 
matters little. Whether Charnisay as lord of all Acadia first 
ordered La Tour to surrender St. John, or La Tour, holding his 
grant from Biencourt to Port Royal, ordered Charnisay to give 
up Annapohs Basin, war had begun, — such border warfare as 
has its parallel only in the raids of rival barons in the Middle 
Ages. Did La Tour's vessels laden with furs slip out from St. 
John River across Fundy Bay bound for France ? There lay at 
Cape Sable and Sable Island Charnisay's freebooters, Charni- 
say's wreckers, ready to board the ship or lure her a wreck on 
Sable Island reefs by false lights. It is unsafe to accept as facts 
the charges and countercharges made by these two enemies ; 
but from independent sources it seems fairly certain that Char- 
nisay, unknown to Cardinal Richelieu, was a bit of a freebooter 
and wrecker ; for his men made a regular business of waylaying 
English ships from Boston, Dutch ships from New York, as 
they passed Sable Island ; and Charnisay's name became cor- 
dially hated by the Protestant colonies of New England. La 
Tour, being Huguenot, could count on firm friends in Boston. 

Countless legends cling to Fundy Bay of the forays between 
these two. In 1640 La Tour and his wife, cruising past Annap- 
olis Basin in their fur ships, rashly entered and attacked Port 
Royal. Their ship was run aground by Charnisay's vessels and 
captured ; but the friars persuaded the victor to set La Tour 
and his wife free, pending an appeal to France. P'rance, of 



66 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



course, decided in favor of Charnisay, who was of royal blood, 
a relative of Richelieu's, in high favor with the court. La Tour's 
patent was revoked and he was ordered to surrender his fort on 
the St. John. 

In answer, La Tour loaded his cannon, locked the fort gates, 
and bade defiance to Charnisay. Charnisay sails across Fundy 
Bay in June, 1643, with a fleet of four vessels and five hundred 

men to bombard the 
fort. La Tour was with- 
out provisions, though 
his store ship from 
France lay in hiding 
outside, blocked from 
entering by Charnisay's 
fleet. Days passed. Re- 
sistance was hopeless. 
On one side lay the 
impenetrable forest ; on 
the other, Charnisay's 
fleet. On the night of 
June 1 2th, La Tour and 
his wife slipped from a 
little sally port in the 
dark, ran along the 
shore, and, evading 
spies, succeeded in row- 
ing out to the store ship. Ebb tide carried them far from the 
four men-of-war anchored fast in front of the abandoned fort. 
Then sails out, the store ship fled for Boston, where La Tour 
and his wife appealed for aid. 

The Puritans of Boston had qualms of conscience about inter- 
fering in this French quarrel ; but they did not forget that 
Charnisay's wreckers had stripped their merchant ships come to 
grief on the reefs of Sable Island. La Tour gave the Boston 
merchants a mortgage on all his belongings at St. John, and in 
return obtained four vessels, fifty mariners, ninety-two soldiers, 




CARDINAL RICHELIEU 



MADAME LA TOUR DEFENDS THE FORT 67 

thirty-eight cannon. With this fleet he swooped down on Fundy 
Bay in July. Charnisay's vessels lay before Fort St. John, where 
the stubborn little garrison still held out, when La Tour came 
down on him like an enraged eagle. Charnisay's fur ships were 
boarded, scuttled, and sunk, while the commander himself fled 
in terror for Port Royal. All sails pressed. La Tour pursued 
right into Annapolis Basin, wounding seven of the enemy, kill- 
ing three, taking one prisoner. Charnisay's one remaining vessel 
grounded in the river. A fight took place near the site of the 
mill which Poutrincourt had built long ago, but Charnisay suc- 
ceeded in gaining the shelter of Port Royal, where his cannon 
soon compelled La Tour to fly from Annapolis Basin. Charnisay 
found it safer to pass that winter in France, and La Tour gath- 
ered in all the peltry traffic of the bay. 

Early in 1644 Charnisay returned and sent a friar to secure 
the neutrality of the New Englanders. All summer negotiations 
dragged on between Boston and Port Royal, La Tour meanwhile 
scouring land and sea unchecked, packing his fort with peltries. 
Finally, Charnisay promised to desist from all fur trade along 
the coast if the New England colonies would remain neutral ; 
and the colonies promised not to aid La Tour. La Tour was 
now outlawed by the French government, and Charnisay had 
actually induced New England to promise not to convey either 
La Tour or his wife to or from Bay of Fundy in English boats. 

La Tour chanced to be absent from his fort in 1645. Like 
a bird of prey Charnisay swooped on St. John River ; but he 
had not reckoned on Madame La Tour — Frances Marie 
Jacqueline. With the courage and agility of a trained soldier, 
she commanded her little garrison of fifty and returned the 
raider's cannonade with a fury that sent Charnisay limping back 
to Port Royal with splintered decks, twenty mangled corpses 
jumbled aft, and a dozen men wounded to the death lying in 
the hold. 

With all the power of France at his back Charnisay had been 
defeated by a woman, — the Huguenot wife of an outlaw ! He 
must reduce La Tour or stand discredited before the world. 



68 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Furious beyond words, he hastened to F^rance to prepare an 
overwhehning" armament. 

But Madame La Tour was not idle. She, too, hastened 
across the Atlantic to solicit aid in London. One can imagine 
how Charnisay gnashed his teeth. Here, at last, was his chance. 
The Boston vessels were not to convey the La Tours back to 
Acadia. Like a hawk Charnisay cruised the sea for the out- 
coming ship with its fair passenger ; but Madame La Tour had 
made a cast-iron agreement with the master of the sailing ves- 
sel to bring her direct to Boston. Instead of this, the vessel 
cruised the St. Lawrence, trading with the Indians, and so 
delayed the aid coming to La Tour ; but when Charnisay's 
searchers came on board off Sable Island, Madame La Tour was 
hidden among the freight in the hold. For the delay she sued 
the sailing master in Boston and obtained a judgment of 
;^2000 ; and when he failed to pay, had his cargo seized and 
sold, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels to aid her 
outlawed husband. So the whole of 1646 passed, each side 
girding itself for the final fray. 

April, 1647, spies brought word to Charnisay that La Tour 
was absent from his fort. Waiting not a moment, Charnisay 
hurried ships, soldiers, cannon across the bay. Inside La Tour's 
fort was no confusion. Madame La Tour had ordered every 
man to his place. Day and night for three days the siege 
lasted, Charnisay's men closing in on the palisades so near they 
could bandy words with the fighters on the galleries inside the 
walls. Among La Tour's fighters were Swiss mercenaries — 
men who fight for the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the lan- 
guage of the day "grease the fist " of the Swiss sentry, or was 
it a case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman's 
command ? Legend gives both explanations ; but on Easter 
Sunday morning Charnisay's men gained entrance by scaling 
the walls where the Swiss sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed 
her men to an inner fort loopholed with guns. Afraid of a final 
defeat that would disgrace him before all the world, Charnisay 
called up generous terms if she would surrender. To save the 



CHARNISAY'S TREACHERY 



69 



lives of the men Madame La Tour agreed to honorable surren- 
der, and the doors were opened. In rushed Charnisay ! To his 
amazement the woman had only a handful of men. Disgusted 
with himself and boiling over with revenge for all these years 
of enmity, Charnisay forgot his promise and hanged every soul 
of the garrison but the traitor who acted as executioner, com- 
pelling" Madame La Tour to watch the execution with a halter 
round her neck amid the jeers of the soldiery. Legend says 
that the experience drove her insane and caused her death 
within three weeks. Charnisay was now lord of all Acadia, with 
j^ 1 0,000 worth of Ma- 
dame La Tour's jewelry 
transferred to Port 
Royal and all La Tour's 
furs safe in the ware- 
houses of Annapolis 
Basin ; but he did not 
long enjoy his triumph. 
He had the reputation 
of treating his Indian 
servants with great 
brutality. On the 24th 
of May, 1650, an Indian 
was rowing him up the narrows near Port Royal. Charnisay 
could not swim. Without apparent cause the boat upset. The 
Indian swam ashore. The commander perished. Legend again 
avers that the Indian upset the boat to be revenged on Char- 
nisay for some brutality. 

La Tour had been wandering from Newfoundland to Boston 
and Quebec seeking aid, but a lost cause has few friends, and 
if La Tour turned pirate on Boston boats, he probably thought 
he was justified in paying off the score of Boston's bargain 
with Charnisay. Later he turned trader with the Indians from 
Hudson Bay, and found friends in Quebec. Word of his wrongs 
reached the French court. When Charnisay perished, La Tour 
was at last appointed lieutenant governor of Acadia. Widow 




ScakT-Smiles to 1 inch 



MAP OF .ANNAPOLIS BASIN 



70 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Charnisay, left with eight children, all minors, made what rep- 
aration she could to La Tour by giving back the fort on the 
St. John, and La Tour, to wipe out the bitter enmity, married 
the widow of his enemy in February of 1653. 

But this was not the seal of peace on his troubled life. 
Cromwell was now ascendant in England, and Major Sedgwick 
of Boston, in 1654, with a powerful fleet, captured Port Royal 
and St. John. Weary of fighting what seemed to be destiny. 
La Tour became a British subject, and with two other English- 
men was granted the whole of Acadia. Ten years later his 
English partners bought out his rights, and La Tour died in 
the land of his many trials about 1666. A year later the Treaty 
of Breda restored Acadia to France. 



CHAPTER V 

FROM lGo5 TO 10^0 

While Charles de La Tour and Charnisay scoured the Bay of 
Fundy in border warfare like buccaneers of the Spanish Main, 
what was Quebec doing ? 

The Hundred Associates were to colonize the country ; but 
fur trading and farming never go together. One means the end 
of the other ; and the Hundred Associates shifted the obligation 
of settling the country by granting vast estates called seigniories 
along the St. Lawrence and leaving to these new lords of the 
soil the duty of bringing out habitants. Later they deeded over 
for an annual rental of beaver skins the entire fur monopoly to 
the Habitant Company, made up of the leading people of New- 
France. So ended all the fine promises of four thousand colonists. 

Years ago Pontgrave had learned that the Indians of the Up- 
Country did not care to come- down the St. Lawrence farther 
than Lake St. Peter's, where L'oquois foe lay in ambush ; and 
the year before Champlain died a double expedition had set out 
from Quebec in July : one to build a fort north of Lake St. 
Peter's at the entrance to the river with three mouths, — in other 
words, to found Three Rivers ; the other, under Father Brebeuf, 
the Jesuit, and Jean Nicolet, the wood runner, to establish a mis- 
sion in the country of the Hurons and to explore the Great Lakes. 

In fact, it must never be forgotten that Champlain's ambi- 
tions in laying the foundations of a new nation aimed just as 
much to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth as to win a 
new kingdom for France. Always, in the minds of the fathers 
of New F" ranee. Church was to be first ; State, second. When 
Charles de Montmagny, Knight of Malta, landed in Quebec one 
June morning in 1636, to succeed Champlain as governor of 
New France, he noticed a crucifix planted by the path side where 



72 CANADA: i'HE KMPIR]': OF THE NORTH 

viceroy and officers clambered up the steep hill to Castle St. 
Louis. Instantly Montmagny fell to his knees before the cross 
in silent adoration, and his example was followed by all the gay 
train of beplumed officers. The Jesuits regarded the episode as 
a splendid omen for New France, and set their chapel organ 
rolling a Te Deum of praise, while Governor and retinue filed 
before the altars with bared heads. 

It was in the same spirit that Montreal was founded. 

The Jesuits' letters on the Canadian missions were now being 
read in France. Religious orders were on fire with missionary 
ardor. The Canadian missions became the fashion of the court. 
Ladies of noble blood asked no greater privilege than to contrib- 
ute their fortunes for missions in Canada. Nuns lay prostrate 
before altars praying night and day for the advancement of 
the heavenly kingdom on the St. Lawrence. The Jesuits had 
begun their college in Quebec. The very year that Champlain 
had first come to the St. Lawrence there had been born in Nor- 
mandy, of noble parentage, a little girl who became a passionate 
devotee of Canadian missions. To divert her mind from the 
calling of a nun, her father had thrown her into a whirl of gay- 
ety from which she emerged married ; but her husband died in 
a few years, and Madame de la Peltrie, left a widow at twenty- 
two, turned again heart and soul to the scheme of endowing a 
Canadian mission. Again her father tried to divert her mind, 
threatening to cut off her fortune if she did not marry. An 
engagement to a young noble, who was as keen a devotee as 
herself, cjuieted her father and averted the loss of her fortune. 
On the death of her father the formal union was dissolved, 
and Madame de la Peltrie proceeded to the Ursuline Convent 
of Tours, where the Jesuits had already chosen a mother 
superior for the new institution to be founded at Quebec — 
Marie of the Incarnation, a woman of some fifty years, a widow 
like Madame de la Peltrie, and, like Madame de la Peltrie, a 
mystic dreamer of celestial visions and divine communings and 
heroic sacrifices. How much of truth, how much of self-delusion, 



MYSTICS COME TO CANADA 



73 



lay in these dreams of heavenly revelation is not for the out- 
sider to say. It is as impossible for the practical mind to pro- 
nounce judgment on the mystic as for the mystic to pronounce 
sentence on the scientist. Both have their truths, both have their 
errors ; and by their 
fruits are they known. 

May 4th, 1639, Ma- 
dame de la Peltrie and 
Marie of the Incarna- 
tion embarked from 
Dieppe for Canada. In 
the ship were also 
another Ursuline nun, 
three hospital sisters to 
found the Hotel Dieu at 
Quebec, Father Vimont, 
superior of Quebec 
Jesuits, and two other 
priests. The boat was 
like a chapel. Ship's 
bell tolled services. 
Morning prayer and 
evensong were chanted 
from the decks, and the 
pilgrims firmly believed 
that their vows allayed a storm. July ist they were among the 
rocking dories of the Newfoundland fishermen, and then on 
the 15th the little sailboat washed and rolled to anchor inshore 
among the fur traders under the heights of Tadoussac. 

At sight of the somber Saguenay, the silver-flooded St. 
Lawrence, the frowning mountains, the far purple hills, the pri- 
meval forests through which the wind rushed with the sound of 
the sea, the fishing craft dancing on the tide like cockle boats, 
the grizzled fur traders bronzed as the crinkled oak forests 
where they passed their lives, the tawny, naked savages agape 
at these white-skinned women come from afar, the hearts of the 




MADAME DE LA PELTRIE 
(.^fter a picture in the Ursuline Convent, Quebec) 



74 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

housed-Lip nuns swelled with emotions strange and sweet, — 
the emotions of a new life in a new world. And when they 
scrambled over the rope coils aboard a fishing schooner to go 
on up to Quebec, and heard the deep- voiced shoutings of the 
men, and witnessed the toilers of the deep fighting wind and 
wave for the harvest of the sea, did it dawn on the fair sister- 
hood that God must have workers out in the strife of the world, 
as well as workers shut up from the world inside convent walls ? 
Who knows ? . . . Who knows ? At Tadoussac, that morning, 
to both Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the Incarnation it 
must have seemed as if their visions had become real. And 
then the cannon of Quebec began to thunder till the echoes 
rolled from hill to hill and shook — as the mystics thought — 
the very strongholds of hell. Tears streamed down their cheeks 
at such welcome. The whole Quebec populace had rallied to 
the water front, and there stood Governor Montmagny in velvet 
cloak with sword at belt waving hat in welcome. Soldiers and 
priests cheered till the ramparts rang. As the nuns put foot to 
earth once more they fell on their knees and kissed the soil 
of Canada. August ist was fete day in Quebec. The chapel 
chimes rang . . . and rang again their gladness. The organ 
rolled out its floods of soul-shattering music, and deep-throated 
chant of priests invoked God's blessing on the coming of the 
women to the mission. So began the Ursuline Convent of 
Quebec and the Hotel Dieu of the hospital sisters ; but Mon- 
treal was still a howling wilderness untenanted by man save in 
midsummer, when the fur traders came to Champlain's factory 
and the canoes of the Indians from the Up-Country danced down 
the swirling rapids like sea birds on waves. 

The letters from the Jesuit missions touched more hearts 
than those of the mystic nuns. 

In Anjou dwelt a receiver of taxes — Jerome le Royer de la 
Dauversiere, a stout, practical, God-fearing man with a family, 
about as far removed in temperament from the founders of the 
Ursulines as a character could well be. Yet he, too, had mystic 



A CITY BUILT OF DREAMS 



75 



dreams and heard voices bidding him found a mission in the 
tenantless wilderness of Montreal. To the practical man the 
thing seems sheer moon-stark madness. If Dauversiere had 
lived in modern days he would have been committed to an asy- 
lum. Here was a man with a family, without a fortune, com- 
manded by what he thought was the voice of Heaven to found 
a hospital in a wilderness where there were no people. Also in 
Paris dwelt a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who heard the 
self-same voices uttering the self-same command. These two 
men were unknown to each other ; yet when they met by 
chance in the picture gallery of an old castle, there fell from 
their eyes, as it were, scales, and they beheld as in a vision each 
the other's soul, and recognized in each fellow-helper and com- 
rade of the spirit. To all this the practical man cries out " Bosh " ! 
Yet Montreal is no bosh, but a stately city, and it sprang from 
the dreams — "fool dreams," enemies would call them — of these 
two men, the Sulpician priest and the Anjou tax collector. 

Hour after hour, arm in arm, they walked and talked, the 
man of prayers and the man of taxes. People or no people at 
Montreal, money or no money, they decided that the inner voice 
must be obeyed. A Montreal Society was formed. Six friends 
joined. What would be equal to $75,000 was collected. There 
were to be no profits on this capital. It was all to be invested 
to the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven. Unselfish if you like, 
foolish they m?y have been, but not hypocrites. 

First of all, they must become Seigneurs of Montreal ; but 
the island of Montreal had already been granted by the Hun- 
dred Associates to one Lauson. To render the title doubly 
secure, Dauversiere and Olier obtained deeds to the island from 
Lauson and from the Hundred Associates. 

Forty-five colonists, part soldiers, part devotees, were then 
gained as volunteers ; but a veritable soldier of Heaven was 
desired as commander. Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maison- 
neuve, was noted for his heroism in war and zeal in religion. 
When other officers returned from battle for wild revels, Maison- 
neuve withdrew to play the flute or pass hours in religious 



76 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

contemplation. His name occurred to both Dauversiere and 
Olier as fittest for command ; but to make doubly sure, they took 
lodgings near him, studied his disposition, and then casually told 
him of their plans and asked his cooperation. Maisonneuve was 
in the prime of life, on the way to high service in the army. 
His zeal took fire at thought of founding a Kingdom of God at 
Montreal ; but his father furiously opposed what must have 
seemed a mad scheme. Maisonneuve's answer was the famous 
promise of Christ : " No man hath left house or brethren or 
sister for my sake but he shall receive a hundredfold." 

Maisonneuve was warned there w^ould be no earthly reward 
— no pay — for his arduous task; but he answered, " I devote 
my life and future ; and I expect no recompense." 

Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, thirt}'-four years old, who had 
given herself to good works from childhood, though she had not 
yet joined the cloister, now felt the call to labor in the wilder- 
ness. Later, in 1653, came Marguerite Bourgeoys to the little 
colony beneath the mountain. She too, like Jeanne Mance, dis- 
trusted dreams and visions and mystic communings, cherishing 
a religion of good works rather than introspection of the soul. 
Dauversiere and Olier remained in France. Fortunately for 
Montreal, practical Christians, fighting soldiers of the cross, 
carried the heavenly standard to the wilderness. 

It was too late to ascend the St. Lawrence when the ship 
brought the crusaders to Quebec in August, 1641 ; and difificul- 
ties harried them from the outset. Was Montmagny, the Gov- 
ernor, jealous of Maisonneuve ; or did he simply realize the fear- 
ful dangers Maisonneuve's people would run going beyond the 
protection of Quebec .'' At all events, he disapproved this build- 
ing of a second colony at Montreal, when the first colony at 
Quebec could barely gain subsistence. He offered them the 
Island of Orleans in exchange for the Island of Montreal, and 
warned them of Iroquois raid. 

"I have not come to argue," answered Maisonneuve, "but 
to act. It is my duty to found a colony at Montreal, and thither I 
go though every tree be an Iroquois." 



FIRST NIGHT AT MONTREAL 



77 



Maisonneuve passed the winter building boats to ascend the 
St. Lawrence next spring ; and Madame de la Peltrie, having 
established the Ursulines at Quebec, now cast in her lot with 
the Montrealers for two years. 

May 8, 1642, the little flotilla set out from Quebec — a pin- 
nace with the passengers, a barge with provisions, two long boats 
propelled by oars and a sweep. Montmagny and Father Vimont 
accompanied the crusaders ; and as the boats came within sight 
of the wooded mountain on May 17, hymns of praise rose from 
the pilgrims that must have mingled strangely on Indian ears 
with the roar of the angry rapids. One can easily call up the 
scene — the mountain, misty with the gathering shadows of sun- 
set, misty as a veiled bride with the color and bloom of spring ; 
the boats, moored for the night below St. Helen's Island, where 
the sun, blazing behind the half-foliaged trees, paints a path of 
fire on the river ; the white bark wigwams along shore with the 
red gleam of camp fire here and there through the forest ; the 
wilderness world bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper 
hymn floats over the evening air ! It is a scene that will never 
again be enacted in the history of the world — dreamers dream- 
ing greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness 
in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeak- 
able. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the cru- 
saders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on 
the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff 
too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies ! 
Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with 
our dreamless grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that 
reject everything which cannot be computed in the terms of 
traffic's dollar ! Well for us if the fruit of our creeds remain to 
attest as much worth as the deeds of these crusaders ! 

Early next morning the boats pulled in ashore where Cartier 
had landed one hundred years before and Champlain had built 
his factory thirty years ago. Maisonneuve was first to spring 
on land. He dropped to his knees in prayer. The others as 



78 CANADA: THE EMriRE OF THE NORTH 

they landed did likewise. Their hymns floated out on the 
forest. Madame de la Peltrie, Jeanne Mance, and the servant, 
Charlotte l-5arrc, quickly decorated a wiklwood altar with ever- 
greens. Then, with Montmagny the Governor, and Maison- 
neuve the soldier, standing on either side, Madame de la 
Peltrie and Jeanne Mance and Charlotte Barre, bowed in rev- 
erence, with soldiers and sailors standing at rest imhooded. 
Father Vimont held the first religious services at Mont Royal. 
"You are a grain of mustard seed," he said, "and you shall 
grow till your branches overshadow the earth." 

Maisonneuve cut the first tree for the fort ; and a hundred 
legends might be told of the little colony's pioneer trials. Once 
a flood threatened the existence of the fort. A cross was erected 
to stay the waters and a vow made if Heaven would save the 
fort a cross should be carried and placed on the summit of the 
mountain. The river abated, and Maisonneuve climbed the steep 
mountain, staggering under the weight of an enormous cross, 
and planted it at the highest point. Here, in the presence of 
all, mass was held, and it became a regular pilgrimage from the 
fort up the mountain to the cross. 

In 1743 came Louis d'Ailleboust and his wife, both zeal- 
ously bound by the same vows as devotees, bringing word of 
more funds for Ville Marie, as Montreal was called. Mont- 
magny's warning of Iroquois proved all too true. Within a year, 
in June, 1743, six workmen were beset in the fields, only one 
escaping. Because his mission was to convert the Indians, • 
Maisonneuve had been ever reluctant to meet the Iroquois in 
open war, preferring to retreat within the fort when the dog 
Pilot and her litter barked loud warning that Indians were hid- 
ing in the woods. Any one who knows the Indian character 
will realize how clemency would be mistaken for cowardice. 
Even Maisonneuve's soldiers began to doubt him. 

" My lord, my lord," they urged, " are the enemy never to 
get a sight of you ? Are we never to face the foe .? " 

Maisonneuve's answer was in March, 1644, when ambushed 
hostiles were detected stealing on the fort. 



MAISONNEUVE FIGHTS RAIDERS 



79 



" Follow me," he ordered thirty men, leaving D'Ailleboust 
in command of the fort. 

Near the place now known as Place d'Armcs the little band 
was greeted by the eldritch scream of eighty painted Iro- 
quois. Shots fell thick and fast. The Iroquois dashed to res- 
cue their wounded, and a young chief, recognizing Maisonneuve 
as the leader of the white men, made a rush for the honor of 
capturing the French commander alive. Maisonneuve had i:)ut 
himself between his retreating men and the advancing warriors. 
Firing, he would retreat a pace, then fire again, keeping his face 
to the foe. His men succeeded in rushing up the hillock, then 
made for the gates in a wild stampede. Maisonneuve was back- 
ing away, a pistol in each hand. The Iroquois circled from tree 
to tree, near and nearer, and like a v/ildwood creature of prey 
was watching his chance to spring, when the P'renchman fired. 
The pistol missed. Dodging, the Indian leaped. Maisonneuve 
discharged the other pistol. The Iroquois fell dead, and while 
warriors rescued the body, Maisonneuve gained the fort gates. 
This was only one of countless frays when the dog Pilot with 
her puppies sounded the alarm of prowlers in the woods. 

What were the letters, what the adventures described by 
the Jesuits, that aroused such zeal and inspired such heroism ? 
It would require many volumes to record the adventures of the 
Jesuits in Canada, and a long list to include all their heroes 
martyred for the faith. Only a few of the most prominent 
episodes in the Jesuits' adventures can be given here. 

When Pierre le Jeune reached Quebec after the victory of 
the Kirke brothers, he found only the charred remains of a mis- 
sion on the old site of Cartier's winter quarters down on the 
St. Charles. Of houses, only the gray-stone cottage of Madame 
Hebert had been left standing. Here Le Jeune was welcomed 
and housed till the little mission could be rebuilt. At first it 
consisted of only mud-plastered log cabins, thatch-roofed, divided 
into four rooms, with garret and cellar. One room decorated 
with saints' images and pictures served as chapel ; another, as 



8o 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



kitchen; a third, as lodgings; the fourth, as refectory. In this 
humble abode six Jesuit priests and two lay brothers passed 
the winter after the war. The roof leaked like a sieve. The 
snow piled high almost as the top of the door. Le Jeune's first 
care was to obtain pupils. These consisted of an Indian boy 
and a negro lad left by the English. Meals of porridge given 
free attracted more Indian pupils ; but Le Jeune's greatest diffi- 
culty was to learn the Indian language. Hearing that a renegade 

Indian named Pierre, 
who had served the 
French as interpreter, 
lodged with some Al- 
gonquins camped below 
Cape Diamond, Le 
Jeune tramped up the 
river bank, along what 
is now the Lower Road, 
where he found the In- 
dians wigwamming, and 
by the bribe of free food 
obtained Pierre. Pierre 
was at best a tricky 
scoundrel, who con- 
sidered it a joke to give 
Le Jeune the wrong 
word for some religious 
precept, gorged himself on the missionaries' food, stole their 
communion wine, and ran off at Lent to escape fasting. 

When Champlain returned to receive Quebec back from the 
English, more priests joined the Jesuits' mission. Among them 
was the lion-hearted ciant, Brebeuf. 




PIERRE LE JEUNE 



If Champlain's bush lopers could join bands of wandering 
Indians for the extension of French dominion, surely the Jesuits 
could dare as perilous a life "for the greater glory of God," — 
as their vows declared. 



LE JEUNE JOINS THE HUNTERS 8 1 

Le Jeune joined a band of wandering Montaignais, Pierre, the 
rascal, tapping the keg of sacramental wine the first night out, 
and turning the whole camp intcj a drunken bedlam, till his own 
brother sobered him with a kettle of hot water flung full in the 
face. That night the priest slept apart from the camp in the 
woods. By the time the hunters reached the forest borderland 
between Quebec and New Brunswick, their number had in- 
creased to forty-five. By Christmas time game is usually dor- 
mant, still living on the stores of the fall and not yet driven 
afield by spring hunger. In camp was no food. The hunters 
halted the march, and came in Christmas Eve of 1633 with not 
so much as a pound of flesh for nearly fifty people. From the 
first the Indian medicine man had heaped ridicule on the white 
priest, and Pierre had refused to interpret as much as a single 
prayer ; but now the whole camp was starving. Pierre happened 
to tell the other Indians that Christmas was the day on which the 
white man's God had come to earth. In vain the medicine man 
had pounded his tom-tom and shouted at the Indian gods from the 
top of the wigwams and offered sacrifice of animals to be slain. 
No game had come as the result of the medicine man's invocation. 

Le Jeune gathered the people about him and through Pierre, 
the interpreter, bade them try the white man's God. In the 
largest of the wigwams a little altar was fitted up. Then the 
Indians repeated this prayer after Le Jeune : 

Jesus, Son of the Almighty . . . who died for us . . . who promised 
that if we ask anything in Thy name, Thou wilt do it — I pray Thee 
with all my heart, give food to these people . . . this people promises 
Thee faithfully they will trust Thee entirely and ol;)ey Thee with all their 
heart ! My Lord, hear my prayer ! I present Thee my life for this people, 
most willing to die that they may live and know Thee. 

"Take that back," grunted the chief. " We love you! We 
don't want you to die." 

" I only want to show that I am your friend," answered 
the priest. 

Le Jeune then commanded them to go forth to the hunt, full 
of faith that God would ^rive them food. 



82 CANADA: TPiE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

But alas for the poor father's hopes and the childlike Indian 
vow ! True, they found abundance of food, — a beaver dam full 
of beaver, a moose, a porcupine taken by the Indian medi- 
cine man. F'ather Le Jeune, with radiant face, met the hunters 
returning laden with game. 

" We must thank your God for this," said the Indian chief, 
throwing down his load. 

" Bah," says Pierre, "you 'd have found it anyway." 

" This is not the time to talk," sneered the medicine man. 
" Let the hungry people eat." 

And by the time the Indians had gorged themselves with ample 
measure for their long fast, they were torpid with sleep. The sad 
priest was fain to wander out under the stars. There, in the snow- 
padded silences of the white-limned forest, far from the joyous 
peal of Christmas bells, he knelt alone and worshiped God. 

For five months he wandered with the Montaignais, and 
now in April the hunters turned toward Quebec with their furs. 
At three in the morning Le Jeune knocked on the door of the 
mission house at Quebec, and was welcomed home by the priests. 
The pilgrimage had taught him what the Jesuits have always 
held — the way to power with a people is through the education 
of the children. " Give me a child for the first seven years of 
its life," said a famous educator, "and I care not what you do 
with him the rest of his years." Missions and schools must be 
established among the tribes of Hurons and Iroquois. 

Consequently, when Champlain sent his soldiers in 1634 to 
build a fort at Three Rivers, they were accompanied by three 
Jesuits, chief of whom was Jean de Brebeuf, lion-hearted, 
bound for the land of the Hurons. The chapel bells of Quebec 
rang and rang again in honor of the new Jesuit mission — 
morning, noon, and night they chimed in airy music, calling 
men's thoughts to God, just as you may hear the chimes to-day ; 
and the ramparts below Quebec thundered and reechoed with 
salvos of cannon when the missionaries set out for Three 
Rivers. 



BRfiBEUF GOES TO TAKE HURON 8 



J 



At Three Rivers waited the Indians of the Up-Country. The 
Jesuits embarked with them for the land of the Hurons. 
The priests traveled barefoot to avoid injuring the frail bark 
of the canoes. Barely had farewell cheers faded on the river, 
when the canoes spread apart. With pieces of buckskin hoisted 
on fishing rods for sail, and a flipping of paddles as naked, 
bronzed arms set the pace, the voyage had begun. Heroism is 
easy with chapel bells ringing ; it is another matter, barefoot 
and with sleeves rolled ujx 

It was the same trail that Champlain had followed up the 
Ottawa. Only Champlain was assured of good treatment, for 
he had promised to fight in the Indian wars ; but the Jesuits 
were dependent on the caprice of their conductors. Any one, 
who, from experience in the wilds, has learned how the term 
"tenderfoot" came to be applied, will realize the hardships 
endured — and endured without self-pity — by these scholarly 
men of immured life. The rocks of the portage cut their naked 
feet. The Indians refused to carry their packs overland and 
flung bundles of clothing and food into the water. In fair 
weather the voyageurs slept on the sand under the overturned 
canoes ; in rain a wigwam was raised, and into the close con- 
fines of this tent crowded men, women, and children, for the 
most part naked, and with less idea of decency than a domestic 
dog. Each night, as the boats were beached, the priests wan- 
dered off into the woods to hold their prayers in privacy. Soon 
the canoes were so far apart the different boats did not camp 
together, and the white men were scattered alone among the 
savages. Robberies increased till, when Brebeuf reached Georgian 
Bay, thirty days from leaving Three Rivers, he had little left but 
the bundles he had carried for himself. 

Brebeuf had been to the Huron country before with Etienne 
Brule, Champlain's pathfinder; but of the first mission no 
record exists. Brebeuf found that Brule had been murdered near 
the modern Penetang ; and the Indians had scarcely brought the 
priest's canoe ashore, when they bolted through the woods, 
leaving; him to follow as best he could. 



84 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NOR'i H 

Take a map of modern Ontario. Draw a circle round Georgian 
Bay, running from Muskoka through Lake Simcoe and up into 
ManitouHn Island. Here, on the very stamping ground of the 
summer tourist, was the scene of the Jesuits' Huron mission. 

When Brebeuf's tall frame emerged from the woods, the 
whole village of Ihonateria dashed out to welcome him, shouting, 
" He has come ! He has come again ! Behold, the Black Robe 
has come again ! " Young braves willingly ran back through the 




GEORGIAN BAY 

forest for the baggage, which the voyageurs had thrown aside ; 
and at one o'clock in the morning, as the messens.ers came 
through the moonlit forest, Brebeuf took up his abode in the 
house of the leading chief. Later came Fathers Davost and 
Daniel. By October the Lidians had built the missionaries their 
wigwam, a bark-covered house of logs, thirty-six feet long, divided 
into three rooms, reception room, living quarters, church. Li 
the entrance hall assembled the Indians, squatting on the floor, 
gazing in astonishment at the religious pictures on the wall, and, 
above all, at the clock. 



LIFE AT THE HURON MISSION 85 

"What does he say ?" they would ask, Ustening solemnly to 
the ticking. 

" He says ' Hang on the kettle,'" Brebeuf would answer as 
the clock struck twelve, and the whole conclave would be given 
a simple meal of corn porridge ; but at four the clock sang a 
different song. 

" It says ' Get up and go home,' " Brebeuf would explain, and 
the Indians would file out, knowing well that the Black Robes 
were to engage in prayer. 

No holiday in the wildwoods was the Jesuit mission. Chapel 
bell called to service at four in the morning. Eight was the 
breakfast hour. The morning was passed teaching, preaching, 
visiting. At two o'clock was dinner, when a chapter of the Bible 
\vas read. After four the Indians were dismissed, and the mis- 
sionaries met to compare notes and plan the next day's campaign. 

By 1645, fi^'6 mission houses had been established, with Ste. 
Marie on the Wye, east of Midland, as the central house. Near 
Lake Simcoe were two missions, — St. Jean Ba'tiste and St. 
Joseph; near Penetang, St. Louis, and St. Ignace. Westward of 
Ste. Marie on the Wye were half a dozen irregular missions 
among the Tobacco Indians. Each of the five regular missions 
boasted palisaded inclosures, a chapel of log slabs with bell and 
spire, though the latter might be only a high wooden cross. 
At Ste. Marie, the central station, were lodgings for sixty people, 
a hospital, kitchen garden, with cattle, pigs, and poultry. At 
various times soldiers had been sent up by the Quebec gov- 
ernors, till some thirty or forty were housed at Ste. Marie. In 
all were eighteen priests, four lay brothers, seven white serv- 
ants, and twenty-three volunteers, unpaid helpers — donnes, 
they were called, young men ardently religious, learning woodlore 
and the Indian language among the Jesuits, as well as exploring 
whenever it was possible for them to accompany the Indians. 
Among the volunteers was one Chouart Groseillers, who, if he 
did not accompany Father Jogues on a preaching tour to the 
tribes of Lake Superior, had at least gone as far as the Sault 
and learned of the vast unexplored world beyond Lake Superior. 



86 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Food, as always, played a large part in winning the soul of 
the redskin; On church fete days as many as three thousand 
people were fed and lodged at Ste. Marie. That the priests 
suffered many trials among the unreasonable savages need 
not be told. When it rained too heavily they were accused of 
ruining the crops by praying for too much rain ; when there 
was drouth they were blamed for not arranging this matter 
with their God ; and when the scourge of smallpox raged through 
the Huron villages, devastating the wigwams so that the timber 
wolves wandered unmolested among the dead, it was easy for 
the humpback sorcerer to ascribe the pestilence also to the in- 
fluence of the Black Robes. Once their houses were set on fire. 
Again and again their lives were threatened. Often after tramp- 
ing twenty miles through the sleet-soaked, snow-drifted spring 
forests, arriving at an Indian village foredone and exhausted, the 
Jesuit was met with no better welcome than a wigwam flap closed 
against his entrance, or a rabble of impish children hooting and 
jeering" him as he sought shelter from house to house. 

But an influence was at work on the borders of the St. Law- 
rence that yearly rendered the Ilurons more tractable. From 
raiding the settlements of the St. Lawrence, the Iroquois were 
sweeping in a scourge more deadly than smallpox up the Ottawa 
to the very forests of Georgian Bay. The Hurons no longer 
dared to go down to Quebec in swarming canoes. Only a few 
picked warriors — perhaps two hundred and fifty — would ven- 
ture so near the Iroquois fighting ground. 

One winter night, as the priests sat round their hearth fire 
watching the mournful shadows cast by the blazing logs on the 
rude walls, Brebeuf, the soldier, lion-hearted, the fearless, told 
in a low, dreamy voice of a vision that had come, — the vision 
of a huge fiery cross rising slowly out of the forest and moving 
across the face of the sky towards the Huron country. It 
seemed to come from the land of the Iroquois. Was the priest's 
vision a dream, or his own intuition deeper than reason, assum- 
ing dire form, portending a universal fear .? Who can tell ? I 
can but repeat the story as it is told in their annals. 



THE SCOURGE OF THE IROQUOIS 87 

" How large was the cross ? " asked the other priests. Bre- 
beuf gazes long in the fire. 

" Large enough to crucify us all," he answers. 

And, as he had dreamed, fell the blow. 

St. Joseph, of the Lake Simcoe region, was situated a day's 
travel from the main fortified mission of Ste. Marie. Round 
it were some two thousand Hurons to whom Father Daniel 
ministered. Father Daniel was just closing the morning services 
on July the 4th, 1648. His tawny people were on their knees 
repeating the responses of the service, when from the forest, 
humming with insect and bird life, arose a sound that was 
neither wind nor running water — confused, increasing, nearing ! 
Then a shriek broke within the fort palisades, — "The enemy! 
the Iroquois ! " and the courtyard was in an uproar indescribable. 
Painted redskins, naked but for the breech clout, were dashing 
across the cornfields to scale the palisades or force the hastily 
slammed gates; Father Daniel rushed from church to wigwams 
rallying the Huron warriors, while the women and children, the 
aged and the feeble, ran a terrified rabble to the shelter of 
the chapel. Before the Hurons could man the walls, Loquois 
hatchets had hacked holes of entrance in the palisades. The 
fort was rushed by a bloodthirsty horde making the air hideous 
with fiendish screams. 

" Fly ! Save yourselves ! " shouted the priest. " I stay here ! 
We shall this day meet in Heaven ! 

In the volley and counter volley of ball and arrow. Father 
Daniel reeled on his face, shot in the heart. In a trice his body 
was cut to pieces, and the Iroquios were bathing their hands in 
his warm lifeblood. A moment later the village was in roaring 
flames, and on the burning pile were flung the fragments of 
the priest's body. The victors set out on the homeward tramp 
with a line of more than si.x hundred prisoners, the majority, 
women and children, to be brained if their strength failed on 
the march, to be tortured in the Iroquois towns if they survived 
the abuse on the way. 



88 CANADA: rHlC EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Next westward Irom the Lake Simcoe missions were St. 
Ignace with four hundred people and St. Louis with seven 
hundred, near the modern Penetang and within short distance 
of the Jesuits' strong headquarters on the River Wye. At 
these two missions labored Brebeuf, the giant, and a fragile 
priest named Lalemant. 

Encouraged by the total destruction of St. Joseph, the L'oquois 
that very fall took the warpath with more than one thousand 
braves. Ascending the Ottawa leisurely, they had passed the 
winter hunting and cutting off any stray wanderers found in 
the forest. 

The Hurons knew the doom that was slowly approaching. 
Yet they remained passive, stunned, terrified by the blow at St. 
Joseph. It was spring of 1649 before the warriors reached 
Georgian Bay. March winds had cleared the trail of snowdrifts, 
but the forests were still leafless. St. Ignace mission lay be- 
tween Lake Simcoe and St. Louis. Approaching it one windy 
March night, the L'oquois had cut holes through the palisades 
before dawn and burst inside the walls with the yells and gyra- 
tions of some hideous hell dance. Here a warrior simulated the 
howl of the wolf. There another approached in the crouching 
leaps of a panther, all the while uttering the yelps and screams 
of a beast of prey lashed to fury. The poor Hurons were easy 
victims. Nearly all their braves happened to be absent hunting, 
and the four hundred women and children, rushing from the long 
houses half dazed with sleep, fell without realizing their fate, or 
found themselves herded in the chapel like cattle at the shambles, 
Iroquois guards at every window and door. 

Luckily three Hurons escaped over the palisades and rushed 
breathless through the forest to forewarn Brebeuf and Lale- 
mant cooped up in St. Louis. The Iroquois came on behind 
like a Vv'olf pack. 

" Escape ! Escape ! Run to the woods. Black Robes ! There 
is yet time," the Indian converts urged Brebeuf ; but the lion- 
hearted stood steadfast, though Lalemant, new to scenes of 
carnage, turned white and trembled in spite of his resolution. 



THE FIGHT AT ST. LOUIS 



89 



" Who would protect the women if the men fled Uke deer to 
the woods?" demanded Brebeuf, and the tigerish yells of the 
on-rushing horde answered the question. 

Before day dawn had tipjied the branches of the leafless trees 
with shafted sunlight, the enemy were hacking furiously at the 
palisades. Trapped and cornered, the most timid of animals 
will fight. With such fury, reckless from desperation, cherish- 
ing no hope, the Hurons 
now fought, but they were 
handicapped by lack of 
guns and balls. Thirty 
Iroquois had been slain, 
a hundred wounded, and 
the assailants drew off for 
breath. It was only the 
lull between two thunder- 
claps. A moment later 
they were on St. Louis' 
walls and had hacked 
through a dozen places. 
At these spots the fiercest 
fighting occurred, and 
those Irocjuois who had 
not already bathed their 
faces in the gore of vic- 
tims at St. Ignace were 
soon enough d}'ed in their 

own blood. Here, there, everywhere, were Brebeuf and Lale- 
mant, fighting, administering last rites, exhorting the Hurons 
to perish valiantly. Then the rolling clouds of flame and smoke 
told the Hurons that their village was on fire. Some dashed 
back to die inside the burning wigwams. Others fought des- 
perately to escape through the broken walls. A few, in the 
confusion and smoke, succeeded in reaching the woods, whence 
they ran to warn Ste. Marie on the Wye. Brebeuf and Lale- 
mant had been knocked down, stripped, bf)und, and were now 




BREBEUF 



90 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



halt" driven, half dragged, with the other captives to be tortured 
at Ignace. Not a sign of fear did either priest betray. 

One would fain pass over the next pages of the Jesuit records. 
It is inconceivable how human nature, even savage nature, so 
often stoops beneath the most repellent cruelties of the brute 
world. It is inconceivable unless one acknowledge an influence 
fiendish ; but let us not judge the Indians too harshly. When 
the Iroc[uois warriors were torturing the Hurons and their mis- 
sionaries, the populace of civilized European cities was outdoing 
the savages on victims whose sins were political. 

While the Jesuits of Ste. Marie were praying all day and 
night before the lighted altar for heavenly intervention to res- 
cue Brebeuf and Lalemant, the two captured priests stood 
bound to the torture stakes, the gapingstock of a thousand 
fiends. When the Iroquois singed Brebeuf from head to foot 
with burning birch bark, he threatened them in tones of thun- 
der with everlasting damnation for persecuting the servants of 
God. The Iroquois shrieked with laughter. Such spirit in a 
man was to their liking. Then, to stop his voice, they cut away 
his lips and rammed a red-hot iron into his mouth. Not once 
did the giant priest flinch or writhe at the torture stake. Then 
they brought out Lalemant, that Brebeuf might suffer the 
agony of seeing a weaker spirit flinch. Poor Lalemant fell at 
his superior's feet, sobbing out a verse of Scripture. Then they 
wreathed Lalemant in oiled bark and set fire to it. 

" We baptize you," they yelled, throwing hot water on the 
dying man. Then they railed out blasphemies, obscenities un- 
speakable, against the Jesuits' religion. Brebeuf had not winced, 
but his frame was relaxing. He sank to his knees, a dying man. 
With the yells of devils jealous of losing their prey, they ripped 
off his scalp while he was still alive, tore his heart from his 
breast, and drank the warm lifeblood of the priest. Brebeuf 
died at four in the afternoon. Strange to relate, Lalemant, of 
the weaker body, survived the tortures till daybreak, when, 
weary of the sport, the Indians desisted from their mad night 
orgies and put an end to his sufferings by braining him. 



RAGUENEAU'S CONVERTS RESIST 



91 



Over at Ste. Marie, Ragueneau and the other priests mo- 
mentarily awaited the attack ; but at Ste. Marie were forty 
French soldiers and ample supply of muskets. The Iroquois 
was bravest as the wolf is bravest — when attacking a lamb. 
Three hundred Hurons lay in ambush along the forest trail. 
These ran from the Iroquois like sheep ; but when three hun- 
dred more sallied from the fort, led by the French, it was the Iro- 
quois' turn to run, and they fled back behind the ])alisades of St. 
Louis. The Hurons followed, entered by the selfsame breaches 




REMN.ANTS OF W.ALLS OF FORT ST. ISI.ARY ON CHRISTI.AN ISLAND 
IN 1S91 

the Iroquois had made, and drove the invaders out. More Iro- 
quois rushed from Ignace to the rescue. A hundred Iroquois 
fell in the day's fight, and when they finally recaptured St. Louis, 
only twenty Hurons remained of the three hundred. The vic- 
tory had been bought at too great cost. Tying their prisoners 
to stakes at St. Ignace, they heaped the court\ard with inflam- 
mable wood, set fire to all, and retreated, taking only enough 
prisoners to carry their plunder. 

Ste. Marie for the time was safe. The invaders had gone ; 
but the blow had crushed forever the prowess of the Huron 
nation. The remaining: towns had thoug:ht for nothing but flight. 



92 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Town after town was forsaken and burned in the summer of 
1649, the corn harvest left standing in the fields, while the 
panic-stricken people put out in their canoes to take refuge on 
the islands of Georgian Bay. Ste. Marie on the Wye alone re- 
mained, and the reason for its existence was vanishing like 
winter snow before summer sun, for its people fled . . . fled 
. . . fled . . . daily fled to the pink granite islands of the lake. 
The Hurons begged the Jesuits to accompany them, and there 
was nothing else for Ragueneau to do. Ste. Marie was stripped, 




MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES 
Showing the territory of the Jesuit Huron missions 



the stock slain for food. Then the buildings were set on fire. 
June 14, just as the sunset bathed water and sky in seas of gold, 
the priest led his homeless people down to the lake as Moses of 
old led the children of Israel. Oars and sweeps, Georgian Bay 
calm as glass, they rafted slowly out to the Christian Islands, — • 
Faith, Hope, and Charity, — which tourists can still see from 
passing steamers, a long wooded line beyond the white water- 
fret of the wind-swept reefs. The island known on the map as 
Charity, or St. Joseph, was heavily wooded. Here the refugees 
found their haven, and the French soldiers cleared the ground 



FLKIHT OF THE HURONS 93 

for a stone fort of walled masonry, — the islands offering little 
else than stone and timber, though the fishing has not failed to 
this day. 

By autumn the walled fort was complete, but some eight 
thousand refugees had gathered to the island. Such numbers 
could not subsist on Georgian Bay in summer. In winter their 
presence meant starvation, and before the spring of 1650 half 
had perished. Of the survivors, many had fed on the bodies 
of the dead. No help had come from Quebec for almost three 
years. The clothing of the priests had long since worn to shreds. 
Ragueneau and his helpers were now dressed in skins like the 
Indians, and reduced to a diet of nuts and smoked hsh. 

With warm weather came sickness. And also came bands of 
raiding Iroquois striking terror to the Tobacco Indians. Among 
them, too, perished Jesuit priests, martyrs to the faith. Did 
some of the Hurons venture from the Christian Islands across 
to the mainland to hunt, they were beset by scalping parties 
and came back to the fort with tales that crazed Ragueneau's 
Indians with terror. The Hurons decided to abandon Geor- 
gian Bay. Some scattered to Lake Superior, to Green Bay, to 
Detroit. Others found refuge on Manitoulin Island. A rem- 
nant of a few hundreds followed Ragueneau and the French 
down the Ottawa to take shelter at Quebec. Their descend- 
ants may be found to this day at the mission of Lorette. 

To-day, as tourists drive through Quebec, marveling at the 
massive buildings and power and wealth of Catholic orders, do 
they pause to consider that the foundation stones of that power 
were dyed in the blood of these early martyrs ? Or, as the 
pleasure seekers glide among the islands of Georgian Bay, do 
they ever ponder that this fair world of blue waters and pink 
granite islands once witnessed the most bloody tragedy of brute 
force triumphant over the blasted hopes of religious zeal .? 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM l<)oO TO 1672 

Having destroyed the Hurons, who were under French pro- 
tection, it is not surprising that the Iroquois now set them- 
selves to destroy the French. From Montreal to Tadoussac the 
St. Lawrence swarmed with war canoes. No sooner had the river 
ice broken up and the birds begun winging north than the Iro- 
quois flocked down the current of the Richelieu, across Lake 
St. Peter to Three Rivers, down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, 
up the St. Lawrence to Montreal. And the snows of midwinter 
afforded no truce to the raids, for the Iroquois cached their 
canoes in the forest, and roamed the woods on snowshoes. 
Settlers fled terrified from their farms to the towns ; farmers 
dared not work in their fields without a sentry standing guard; 
Montreal became a prison ; Three Rivers lay blockaded ; and at 
Quebec the war canoes passed defiantly below the cannon of 
Cape Diamond, paddles beating defiance against the gun'els, 
or prows flaunting the scalps of victims within cannon fire 
of Castle St. Louis. Rich and poor, priests and parishioners, 
governors and habitants, all alike trembled before the lurking 
treachery. Father Jogues had been captured on his way from 
the Huron mission ; Pere Poncet was likewise kidnapped at 
Quebec and carried to the tortures of the Mohawk towns ; and 
a nephew of the Governor of Quebec was a few years later 
attacked while hunting" near Lake Chami)lain. 

The outraged people of New France realized that fear was 
only increasing the boldness of the Iroquois. A Mohawk chief 
fell into their hands. By way of warning, they bound him to a 
stake and burned him to death. The Indian revenge fell swift and 
sure. In 1653 the Governor of Three Rivers and twelve leading 
citizens were murdered a short distance from the fort gates. 

94 



RADISSON CAPTURED BY IROQUOIS 95 

One night in May of 1652 a tall, slim, swarthy lad about 
sixteen years of age was seen winding his way home to Three 
Rivers from a day's shooting in the marshes. He had set out at 
day dawn with some friends, but fear of the Iroquois had driven 
his comrades back. Now at nightfall, within sight of Three 
Rivers, when the sunset glittered from the chapel spire, he 
unslung his bag of game and sat down to reload his musket. 
Then he noticed that the pistols in his belt had been water- 
soaked from the day's wading, and he reloaded them too. 

Any one who is used to life in the open knows how at 
sundown wild birds foregather for a last conclave. Ducks were 
winging in myriads and settling on the lake with noisy flacker. 
Unable to resist the temptation of one last shot, the boy was 
gliding noiselessly forward through the rushes, when suddenly 
he stopped as if rooted to the ground, with hands thrown up and 
eyes bulging from his head. At his feet lay the corpses of his 
morning comrades, — scalped, stripped, hacked almost piecemeal! 
Then the instinct of the hunted thing, of flight, of self-protection, 
eclipsed momentary terror, and the boy was ducking into the 
rushes to hide wdien, with a crash of musketry from the woods, the 
Iroquois were upon him. 

When he regained consciousness, he was pegged out on the 
sand amid a flotilla of beached canoes, where Iroquois warriors 
were having an evening meal. So began the captivity, the love of 
the wilds, the wide wanderings of one of the most intrepid ex- 
plorers in New France, — Pierre Esprit Radisson. 

His youth and the fact that he would make a good warrior were 
in his favor. When he was carried back to the Mohawk town 
and with other prisoners compelled to run the gauntlet between 
two lines of tormentors, Radisson ran so fast and dodged so 
dexterously that he was not once hit. The feat was greeted 
with shrieks of delight by the Iroquois ; and the high-spirited 
boy was given in adoption to a captive Huron woman. 

Things would have gone well had he not bungled an attempt 
to escape ; but one night, while in camp with three Iroquois 
hunters, an Algonquin captive entered. While the Iroquois 



96 



CANADA: THP: EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



slept with guns stacked against the trees, the sleepless Algon- 
quin captive rose noiselessly where he lay by the fire, seized the 
Mohawk warriors' guns, threw one tomahawk across to Radisson, 
and with the other brained two of the sleepers. The French boy 

aimed a blow at the 
third sleeper, and the 
two captives escaped. 
But they might have 
saved themselves the 
trouble. They were 
pursued and overtaken 
on Lake St. Peter, 
within sight of Three 
Rivers. This time 
Radisson had to endure 
all the diablcrics of 
Mohawk torture. For 
two days he was kept 
bound to the torture 
stake. The nails were 
torn from his fingers, 
the flesh burnt from the 
soles of his feet, a hun- 
dred other barbarous 
freaks of impish In- 
dian children wreaked 
on the French boy. 
Arrows with flaming 
points were shot at his 
naked body. His muti- 
lated finger ends were 
ground between stones, or thrust into the smoking bowl of a 
pipe full of coals, or bitten by fiendish youngsters being trained 
up the way a Mohawk warrior should go. 

Radisson's youth, his courage, his very dare-de\il rashness, 
together with presents of wampum belts from his Indian parents, 




A CANADIAN ON SNOW.SHOES 
(.After La Potheiie) 



RADISSON ESCAPES 97 

saved his life for a second lime, and a year of wild wanderinL;s 
with Mohawk warriors finally brought him to Albany on the 
Hudson, where the Dutch would have ransomed him as they 
had ransomed the two Jesuits, Jogues and Poncet ; but the boy 
disliked to break faith a second time with his loyal Indian friends. 
Still, the glimpse of white man's life caused a terrible upheaval of 
revulsion from the barbarities, the filth, the vice, of the Mohawk 
camp. He could endure Indian life no longer. One morning, in 
the fall of 1653, he stole out from the Mohawk lodges, while the 
mist of day dawn still shadowed the forest, and broke at a run 
down the trail of the Mohawk valley for Albany. All day he ran, 
pursued by the phantom fright of his own imagination, fancying 
everything that crunched beneath his moccasined tread some 
Mokawk warrior, seeing in the branches that reeled as he passed 
the arms of pursuers stretched out to stop hmi ; — on . . . and 
on . . . and on, he ran, pausing neither to eat nor rest ; here 
dashing into the bed of a stream and running along the pebbled 
bottom to throw pursuers off the trail ; there breaking through a 
thicket of brushwood away from the trail, only to come back 
to it breathless farther on, when some alarm of the wind in the 
trees or deer on the move had proved false. Only muscles of 
iron strength, lithe as elastic, could have endured the strain. 
Nightfall at last came, hiding him from pursuers ; but still he 
sped on at a run, following the trail by the light of the stars 
and the rush of the river. By sunrise of the second day he was 
staggering ; for the rocks were slippery with frost and his moc- 
casins worn to tatters. It was four in the afternoon before he 
reached the first outlying cabin of the Dutch settlers. F'or three 
days he lay hidden in Albany behind sacks of wheat in a thin- 
boarded attic, through the cracks of which he could see the 
Mohawks searching everywhere. The Jesuit Poncet gave him 
passage money to take ship to Europe by way of New York. 
New York was then a village of a few hundred houses, thatch- 
roofed, with stone fort, stone church, stone barracks. Central 
Park was a rocky wilderness. What is now Wall Street was the 
stamping ground of pigs and goats. January of 1654 Radisson 



98 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OE THE NORTH 

reached Europe, no longer a boy, but a man inured to danger 
and hardships and daring, though not yet eighteen. 

When Radisson came back to Three Rivers in May he found 
changes had taken place in New France, Among the men mur- 
dered with the Governor of Three Rivers by the Mohawks the 
preceding year had been his sister's husband, and the widow 
had married one Medard Chouart de Groseillers, who had served 
in the Huron country as a lay helper with the martyred Jesuits. 
Also a truce had been patched up between the Iroquois and 
the French. The Iroquois were warring against the Eries and 
wanted arms from the French. A still more treacherous motive 
underlay the Iroquois' peace. They wanted a French settle- 
ment in their country as a guarantee of non-intervention when 
they continued to r^id the refugee Hurons. Such duplicity was 
unsuspected by New France. The Jesuits looked upon the 
peace as designed by Providence to enable them to establish 
missions among the Iroquois. Father Le Moyne went from 
village to village preaching the gospel and receiving belts of 
wampum as tokens of peace — one belt containing as many as 
seven thousand beads. When the Onondagas asked for a French 
colony, Lauzon, the French Governor, readily consented if the 
Jesuits would i)ay the cost, estimated at about $10,000; and in 
1656 Major Dupuis had led iifty Frenchmen and four Jesuits 
up the St. Lawrence in long boats through the wilderness to a 
little hill on Lake Onondaga, where a palisaded fort was built, 
and the lilies of France, embroidered on a white silk flag by the 
Ursuline nuns, flung from the breeze above the Iroquois land. 
The colony was hardly established before three hundred Mo- 
hawks fell on the Hurons encamped under shelter of Quebec, 
butchered without mercy, and departed with shouts of laughter 
that echoed below the guns at Cape Diamond, scalps waving 
from the prow of each Iroquois canoe. Quebec was thunder- 
struck, numb with fright. The French dared not retaliate, or the 
Iroquois would fall on the colony at Onondaga. Perhaps peo- 
ple who keep their vision too constantly fi.xed on heaven lose 



AT ONONDAGA 



99 



sight of the practical ckities of earth ; but when eighty Onon- 
dagas came again in 1657, inviting a hundred Hurons to join 
the Iroquois Confederacy, the Jesuits again suspected no 
treachery in the invitation, but saw only a providential oppor- 
tunity to spread one hundred Huron converts among the Iro- 
quois pagans. Father Ragueneau, who had led the poor refugees 
down from the Christian Islands on Georgian Bay, now with 
another priest offered to accompany the Hurons to the Iroquois 
nation. An interpreter was needed. Young Radisson, now 
twenty-one years of age, offered to go as a lay helper, and the 




SA VSO V 



sauson's map, 1656 

party of two hundred and twenty French, eighty Iroquois, one 
hundred Hurons, departed from the gates of Montreal, July 26. 

Hardly were they beyond recall, before scouts brought word 
that twelve hundred Iroquois had gone on the warpath against 
Canada, and three Frenchmen of Montreal had been scalped. 
At last the Governor of Quebec bestirred himself : he caused 
twelve Iroquois to be seized and held as hostages for the safety 
of the French. 

The Onondagas had set out from Montreal carrying the 
Frenchmen's baggage. Beyond the first portage they flung 
the packs on the ground, hurried the Hurons into canoes so 
that no two Hurons were in one boat, and paddled over the 



lOO CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

water with loud laughter, leaving the French in the lurch. 
Father Ragueneau and Radisson quickly read the ominous signs. 
Telling the other French to gather up the baggage, they armed 
themselves and paddled in swift pursuit. That night Rague- 
neau's party and the Onondagas camped together. Nothing was 
said or done to evince treachery. Friends and enemies, Onon- 
dagas and Hurons and white men, paddled and camped together 
for another week; but when, on August 3, four Huron war- 
riors and two women forcibly seized a canoe and headed back 
for Montreal, the Onondagas would delay no longer. That after- 
noon as the Indians paddled inshore to camp on one of the 
Thousand Islands, some Onondaga braves rushed into the woods 
as if to hunt. As the canoes grated the pebbled shore a secret 
signal was given. The Huron men with their eyes bent on the 
beach, intent on landing, never knew that they had been struck. 
Onondaga hatchets, clubs, spears, were plied from the water side, 
and from the hunters ambushed on shore crashed musketry that 
mowed down those who would have fled to the woods. 

By night time only a few Huron women and the French had 
survived the massacre. Such was the baptism of blood that 
inaugurated the French colony at Onondaga. Luckily the fort 
built on the crest of the hill above Lake Onondaga was large 
enough to house stock and provisions. Outside the palisades 
there daily gathered more Iroquois warriors, who no longer dis- 
sembled a hunger for Jesuits' preaching. Among the warriors 
were Radisson's old friends of the Mohawks, and his foster father 
confessed to him frankly that the Confederacy were only delay- 
ing the massacre of the French till they could somehow obtain 
the freedom of the twelve Iroquois hostages held at Quebec. 

Daily more warriors gathered ; nightly the war drum pounded ; 
week after week the beleaguered and imprisoned French heard 
their stealthy enemy closing nearer and nearer on them, and the 
painted foliage of autumn frosts gave place to the leafless trees 
and the drifting snows of midwinter. The French were hemmed 
in completely as if on a desert isle, and no help could come from 
Quebec, where New France was literally under Iroquois siege. 



HOW THE FRENCH WERE SAVED loi 

The question was, what to do ? Messengers had been 
secretly sent to Quebec, but the Mohawks had caught the 
scouts bringing back answers, and there was no safe escape 
from the colony through ambushed woods in midwinter. The 
Iroquois could afford to bide their time for victims who could 
not escape. All winter the whites secretly built boats in the 
lofts of the fort, but when the timbers were put together the 
boats had to be brought downstairs, and a Huron convert 
spread a terrifying report of a second deluge for which the white 
men were preparing a second Noah's Ark. Mohawk warriors 
at once scented an attempt to escape when the ice broke up in 
spring, and placed their braves in ambush along the portages. 
Also they sent a deputation to see if that story of the boats 
were true. Forewarned by Radisson, the whites built a floor 
over the boats, heaped canoes above the floor, and invited the 
Mohawk spies in. The Mohawks smiled grimly and were reas- 
sured. Canoes would be ripped into shingles if they ran the ice 
jam of spring. The Iroquois felt doubly certain of their victims ; 
but Radisson, free to go among the warriors as one of them- 
selves, learned that they were plotting to murder half the colony 
and hold the other half as hostages for the safety of the twelve 
Indians in the dungeon at Quebec. The whites could delay no 
longer. Something must be done, but what .? Radisson, knowing 
the Indian customs, proposed a way out. 

No normally built savage could refuse an invitation to a 
sumptuous feast. According to Indian custom, no feaster dare 
leave uneaten food on his plate. Waste to the Indian is crime. 
In the words of the Scotch proverb, " Better burst than waste." 
And all Indians have implicit faith in dreams. Radisson dreamed 
— so he told the Indians — that the white men were to give 
them a marvelous banquet. No sooner drean^ed than done ! 
The Iroquois probably thought it a chance to obtain possession 
inside the fort ; but the whites had taken good care to set the 
banquet between inner and outer walls. 

Such a repast no savage had ever enjoyed in the memory of 
the race. All the ambushed spies flocked in from the portages. 



I02 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

The painted warriors washed off their grease, donned their best 
buckskin, and rallied to the banquet as to battle. All the stock 
but one solitary pig, a few chickens and dogs, had been 
slaughtered for the kettle. Such an odor of luscious meat 
steamed up from the fort for days as whetted the warriors' hun- 
ger to the appetite of ravenous wolves. Finally, one night, the 
trumpets blew a blare that almost burst eardrums. Fifes 
shrilled, and the rub-a-dub-dub of a dozen drums set the air in 
a tremor. A great tire had been kindled between the inner and 
outer walls that set shadows dancing in the forest. Then the 
gates were thrown open, and in trooped the feasters. All the 
French acting as waiters, the whites carried in the kettles — 
kettles of wild fowl, kettles of oxen, kettles of dogs, kettles of 
porridge and potatoes and corn and what not ? That is it — • 
what not .? Were the kettles drugged ? Who knows .? The feast- 
ers ate till their eyes were rolling lugubriously ; and still the 
kettles came round. The Indians ate till they were torpid as 
swollen corpses, and still came the white men with more kettles, 
while the mischievous French lad, Radisson, danced a mad jig, 
shouting, yelling, " Eat ! eat ! Beat the drum ! Awake ! awake ! 
Cheer up ! Eat ! eat ! " 

By midnight every soul of the feast had tumbled over sound 
asleep, and at the rear gates were the French, stepping noise- 
lessly, speaking in whispers, launching their boats loaded with 
provisions and ammunition. The soldiers were for going back 
and butchering every warrior, but the Jesuits forbade such 
treachery. Then Radisson, light-spirited as if the refugees had 
been setting out on a holiday, perpetrated yet a last trick on 
the warriors. To the bell rope of the main gate he fastened a 
pig, so when the Indians would pull the rope for admission, 
they would hear the tramp of a sentry inside. Then he stuffed 
effigies of men on guard round the windows of the fort. 

It was a pitchy, sleety night, the river roaring with the loose 
ice of spring flood, the forests noisy with the boisterous March 
wind. Out on the maelstrom of ice and flood launched the 
fifty-three colonists, March 20, 1658. By April they were safe 



WORD OF THE WESTERN LAND 103 

inside the walls of Quebec, and chance hunters brought word 
that what with sleep, and the measured tramp, tramp of the pig, 
and the baying of the dogs, and the clucking of the chickens 
inside the fort, the escape of the whites had not been discovered 
for a week. The Indians thought the whites had gone into 
retreat for especially long prayers. Then a warrior climbed the 
inner palisades, and rage knew no bounds. The fort was looted 
and burnt to the ground. 

Peltry traffic was the life of New France. Without it the col- 
ony would have perished, and now the rupture of peace with the 
Iroquois cut off that traflfic. To the Iroquois land south of the St. 
Lawrence the French dared not go, and the land of the Hurons 
was a devastated wilderness. The boats that came out to New 
France were compelled to return without a single peltry, but 
there still remained the unknown land of the Algonquin north- 
west and beyond the Great Lakes. Year after year young 
French adventurers essayed the exploration of that land. In 
1634 Jean Nicolet, one of Champlain's wood runners, had gone 
westward as far as Green Bay and coasted the shores of Lake 
Michigan. Jesuits, where they preached on Lake Superior, had 
been told of a vast land beyond the Sweet Water Seas, — Great 
Lakes, — -a land where wandered tribes of warriors powerful as 
the Iroquois. 

Yearly, when the Algonquins came down the Ottawa to trade, 
Jesuits and young French adventurers accompanied the canoes 
back up the Ottawa, hoping to reach the Unknown Land, which 
rumor said was bounded only by the Western Sea. However, 
the priests went no farther than Lake Nipissing ; but two name- 
less French wood runners came back from Green Bay in August 
of 1656 with marvelous tales of wandering hunters to the north 
called " Christinos " (Crees), who passed the winter hunting 
buffalo on a land bare of trees (the prairie) and the summer fish- 
ing on the shores of the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They told 
also of fierce tribes south of the Christinos (the Sioux), who 
traded with the Indians of the Spanish settlements in Mexico. 



I04 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

All New France became fired by these reports. When Ra- 
disson returned from Onondaga in April of 1659, he found his 
brother-in-law, Chouart Groseillers, just back from Nipissing, 
where he had been serving the Jesuits, with more tales of this 
marvelous undiscovered land. The two kinsmen decided to go 
back with the Algonquins that very year ; for, confessed Radisson 
in his journal, " I longed to see myself again in a boat." 

Thirty other Frenchmen and two Jesuits had assembled in 
Montreal to join the Algonquins. More than sixty canoes set out 
from Montreal in June, the one hundred and forty Algonquins 
well supplied with firearms to defend themselves from marauding 
Iroquois. Numbers begot courage, courage carelessness ; and 
before the fleet had reached the Chaudiere Falls, at the modern 
city of Ottawa, the canoes had spread far apart in utter forget- 
fulness of danger. Not twenty were within calling distance when 
an Indian prophet, or wandering medicine man, ran down to the 
shore, throwing his blanket and hatchet aside as signal of peace, 
and shouting out warning of Iroquois warriors ambushed farther 
up the river. 

Drunk with the new sense of power from the possession of 
French firearms, perhaps drunk too with French brandy ob- 
tained at Montreal, the Algonquins paused to take the strange 
captive on board, and returned thanks for the friendly warning 
by calling their benefactor a "coward and a dog and a hen." 
At the same time they took the precaution of sleeping in mid- 
stream with their canoes abreast tied to water-logged trees. A 
dull roar through the night mist foretold they were nearing the 
great Chaudiere Falls ; and at first streak of day dawn there 
was a rush to land and cross the long portage before the mist 
lifted and exposed them to the hostiles. 

To any one who knows the region of Canada's capital the 
scene can easily be recalled : the long string of canoes gliding 
through the gray morning like phantoms ; Rideau Falls shim- 
mering on the left like a snowy curtain ; the dense green of 
Gatineau Point as the birch craft swerved across the river inshore 
to the right; the wooded heights, now known as Parliament Hill, 



WESTWARD BOUND 



105 



jutting above the river mist, the new foUage of the topmost trees 
just tipped with the first primrose shafts of sunrise ; then the 
vague stir and unrest in the air as the sun came up till the gray 
fog became rose mist shot with gold, and rose like a curtain to 
the upper airs, revealing the angry, tempest-tossed cataract 
straight ahead, hurtling over the rocks of the Chaudiere in walls 
of living waters. Where the lumber piles of Hull on the right 
to-day jut out as if to span Ottawa River to Parliament Hill, the 
voyageurs would land to portage across to Lake Du Chene. 

Just as they sheered inshore the morning air was split by a 
hideous din of guns and war whoops. The Iroquois had been 
lying in ambush at the portage. The Algonquins' bravado now 
became a panic. They abandoned canoes and baggage, threw 
themselves behind a windfall of trees, and poured a steady rain 
of bullets across the portage in order to permit the other canoes 
to come ashore. When the fog lifted, baggage and canoes lay 
scattered on the shore. Behind one barricade of logs lay the 
French and Algonquins ; behind another, the Iroquois ; and 
woe betide the warrior who showed his head or dared to 
cross the open. All day the warriors kept up their cross fire. 
Thirteen Algonquins had perished, and the French were only 
waiting a chance to abandon the voyage. Luckily, that night 
was pitch-dark. The Algonquin leader blew a long low call 
through his birch trumpet. All hands rallied and rushed for 
the boats to cross the river. All the Frenchmen's baggage had 
been lost. Of the white adventurers every soul turned back 
but Groseillers and Radisson. 

The Algonquins now made up in caution what they had at 
first lacked. They voyaged only by night and hid by day. No 
camp fires were kindled. No muskets were fired even for game ; 
and the paddlers were presently reduced to food of tripe de 
rocJie — green moss scraped from rocks. Birch canoes could 
not cross Lake Huron in storm ; so the Indians kept close to 
the south shore of Georgian Bay, winding among the pink granite 
islands, past the ruined Jesuit missions across to the Straits of 
Mackinac and on down Lake Michigan to Green Bay. 



106 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

" But our mind was not to stay here," relates Radisson, "but 
to know the remotest people." Sometime between April and 
July of 1659 the two white men had followed the Indian hunters 
across what is now the state of Wisconsin to " a mighty river 
like the St. Lawrence." They had found the Mississippi, first of 
white men to view the waters since the treasure-seeking Spaniards 
of the south crossed the river. They had penetrated the Un- 
known. They had discovered the Great Northwest — a world 
boundlessly vast ; so vast no man forever after in the history of 
the human race need be dispossessed of his share of the earth. 
Something of the importance of the discovery seems to have 
impressed Radisson ; for he speaks of the folly of the European 
nations fighting for sterile, rocky provinces when here is land 
enough for all — land enough to banish poverty. 

The two Frenchmen's wanderings with the tribes of the 
prairie — whether those tribes were Omahas or lowas or Man- 
danes or Mascoutins or Sioux — cannot be told here. It would 
fill volumes. I have told the story fully elsewhere. By spring of 
1660 Radisson and Groseillers are back at Sault Ste. Marie, hav- 
ing gathered wealth of beaver peltries beyond the dreams of 
avarice ; but scouts have come to the Sault with ominous news — 
news of one thousand Iroquois braves on the warpath to destroy 
every settlement in New France. Hourly, daily, weekly, have 
Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal been awaiting the blow. 

The Algonquins refuse to go down to Quebec with Radisson 
and Groseillers. " Fools," shouts Radisson in full assembly of 
their chiefs squatting round a council fire, " are you going to 
allow the Iroquois to destroy you as they destroyed the Hurons ? 
How are you going to fight the Iroquois unless you come down 
to Quebec for guns } Do you want to see your wives and children 
slaves .'' For my part, I prefer to die like a man rather than 
live a slave." 

The chiefs were shamed out of their cowardice. Five hun- 
dred young warriors undertook to conduct the two white men 
down to Quebec. They embarked at once, scouts to the fore 
reconnoitering all portages, and guards on duty wherever the 



BOLLARD'S HEROES 



107 



boats landed. A few Iroquois braves were seen near the Long 
Sault Rapids, but they took to their heels in such evident 
fright that Radisson was puzzled to know what had become of 
the one thousand braves on the warpath. Carrying the beaver 
pelts along the portage so they could be used as shields in case 
of attack, the Algonquins came to the foot of the Long Sault 
Rapids near Montreal, and saw plainly what had happened to 
the invading warriors. A barricade of logs the shape of a square 
fort stood on the shore. From the pickets hung the scalps of 
dead Indians and on the sands lay the charred remains of 
white men. Every tree for yards round was peppered with 
bullet holes. Here was a charred stake where some victim 
had been tortured ; there the smashed remnants of half-burnt 
canoes ; and at another point empty powder barrels. A ter- 
rible battle had been waged but a week before. Radisson could 
trace, inside the barricade of logs, holes scooped in the sand 
where the beseiged, desperate with thirst, had drunk the muddy 
water. At intervals in the palisades openings had been hacked, 
and these were blood stained, as if the scene of the fiercest 
fighting. Bark had been burnt from the logs in places, where 
the assailants had set fire to the fort. 

From Indian refugees at Montreal, Radisson learned details 
of the fight. It was the battle most famous in early Canadian 
annals — the Long Sault. All winter Quebec, Three Rivers, 
and Montreal had cowered in terror of the coming Iroquois. In 
imagination the beleaguered garrisons foresaw themselves mar- 
tyrs of Mohawk ferocity. It was learned that seven hundred of 
the Iroquois warriors were hovering round the Richelieu opposite 
Three Rivers. The rest of the braves had passed the winter 
man-hunting in the Huron country, and were in spring descend- 
ing the Ottawa to unite with the lower band. 

Week after week Quebec awaited the blow ; but the blow 
never fell, for at Montreal was a little band of seventeen heroes, 
led by a youth of twenty-five, — Adam Bollard, — who longed 
to wipe out the stain of a misspent boyhood by some glorious 
exploit in the service of the Holy Cross. 



lo8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

When word came that the upper foragers were descending 
from the country of the Hurons to unite with the lower Iroquois 
against Montreal, Dollard proposed to go up the Ottawa with a 
picked party of chosen fighters, waylay the Iroquois at the foot 
of the Long Sault Rapids, and so prevent the attack on Montreal. 
Sixteen young men volunteered to join him. Charles Le Moyne, 
now acting as interpreter at Montreal, begged the young heroes 
to delay till reenforcements could be obtained : seventeen French- 
men against five hundred Mohawks meant certain death ; but 
delay meant risk, and Dollard coveted nothing more than a death 
of glory. At the chapel of the Hotel Dieu the young heroes 
made what they knew would certainly be their last confession, 
bade eternal farewell to friends, and with crushed corn for 
provisions set out in canoes for the upper Ottawa. May i, 
they came to the foot of the Long Sault. Here a barricade of 
logs had been erected in some skirmish the year before, and 
here, too, was the usual camping place of the Iroquois as their 
canoes came bounding down the swift waters of the Ottawa. 
Dollard and his brave boys landed, slung their kettles for the 
night meal, and sent scouts upstream to forewarn when the 
Iroquois came. The night was passed in prayer. Next day 
arrived unexpected reenforcements. Two bands of forty Hurons 
and four Algonquins, under a brave Huron convert of the 
Christian Islands, had asked Maisonneuve's permission to join 
Dollard and wreak their pent vengeance on the Mohawks. 
Early one morning the scouts reported five Iroquois canoes 
coming slowly downstream, and two hundred more warriors 
behind. There was not even care to bring a supply of water 
inside the barricade or remove kettles from the sticks. Posted 
in ambush, the young soldiers fired as soon as the first canoes 
came within range. This put the rest of the Iroquois on guard. 
The whites rushed for the shelter of their barricade. The 
Indians dashed to erect a fort of their own. Inside Dollard's 
palisades all was activity. Cracks were plastered up with mud 
between logs, four marksmen with double stands of arms posted 
at each loophole, and a big musketoon leveled straight for the 



THE FIOHT AT THE LONG SAULT 109 

Iroquois redoubt. The Iroquois rushed out yelling like rtends, 
and jumping sideways as they advanced, to avoid becoming 
targets ; but the scattering fire of the musketoon caught them 
full abreast and a Seneca chief fell dead. The Iroquois then 
broke up Bollard's canoes and tried to set fire to the logs ; but 
again the musketoon 's scattering bullets mowed a swath of 
death in the advancing ranks, and for a second time the red 
warriors sought shelter behind the logs. Probably to obtain 
truce till they could send word to the other warriors on the 
Richelieu, the Iroquois then hung out a flag of parley ; but the 
Huron chief knew what peace with an Iroquois meant. He it 
was, on the Christian Islands, who, when the Irocjuois had pro- 
posed a similar parley for the purpose of massacring the Hurons, 
invited their chiefs into the Huron camp and brained them for 
their treachery. Bollard's band made answer to the flag hoisted 
above the Iroquois pickets by rushing out, securing the head of 
the Seneca chief, and elevating it on a pike above their fort. 

But as the fight went on, the whites had to have water, and 
a few rushed for the ri\-er to fill kettles. This rejoiced the 
hearts of the Iroquois. They could guess if the whites were short 
of water, it only required more warriors to surround the barri- 
cade completely and compel surrender. Scouts had meanwhile 
gone for the Iroquois at Richelieu ; and on the fifth day of the 
siege a roar, gathering volume as it approached, told Bollard 
that the seven hundred warriors were coming through the forest. 
Among the newcomers were Huron renegades, who approached 
within speaking distance of the fort and called out for the 
Hurons to save themselves from death by surrender. Beath 
was plainly inevitable, and all the Hurons but the chief deserted. 
This reduced Bollard's band from sixty to twent}'. The whites 
were now weak from lack of food and sleep ; but for three more 
days and nights the marksmen and musketoon plied such deadly 
aim at the assailants that the Iroquois actually held a council 
whether they should retire. The Iroquois chiefs argued that it 
would disgrace the nation forever if one thousand of their 
warriors were to retire before a handful of beardless white bovs. 



no CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Solemnly the bundle of war sticks was thrown on the ground. 
Then each warrior willing to go on with the siege picked up a 
stick. The chiefs chose first and the rest were shamed into 
doing likewise. Inside the fort, Bollard's men were at the last 
extremities. Blistered and blackened with powder smoke, the 
fevered men were half delirious from lack of sleep and water. 
Some fell to their knees and prayed. Others staggered with 
sleep where they stood. Others had not strength to stand and 
sank, muttering prayers, to their knees. The Iroquois were 
adopting new tactics. They could not reach the palisades in 
the face of the withering fire from the musketoon, so they 
constructed a movable palisade of trees, behind which marched 
the entire band of warriors. In vain Bollard's marksmen aimed 
their bullets at the front carriers. Where one fell another 
stepped in his place. Bcsperate, Bollard resolved on a last 
expedient. Some accounts say he took a barrel of powder ; 
others, that he wrapped powder in a huge bole of birch bark. 
Putting a light to this, he threw it with all his might ; but his 
strength had failed ; the dangerous projectile fell back inside 
the barricade, exploding ; marksmen were driven from their 
places. A moment later the Iroquois were inside the barricade 
screeching like demons. They found only three Frenchmen alive ; 
and so great was the Mohawk rage to be foiled of victims that 
they fell on the Huron renegades in their own ranks and put them 
to death on the spot. 

Such was the Battle of the Long Sault of which Radisson saw 
the scars on his way down the Ottawa. It saved New France, 
If seventeen boys could fight in this fashion, how — the Iroquois 
asked — would a fort full of men fight ? A few days later 
Radisson was conducted in triumph through the streets of Que- 
bec and personally welcomed by the new governor, d'Argenson. 

It can well be imagined that Radisson's account of the vast 
new lands discovered by him aroused enthusiasm at Quebec. 
Among the Crees, Radisson and Groseillers had heard of that 
Sea of the North — Hudson Bay — to which Champlain had 



TO SEEK THE NORTH SEA 



I I I 



tried to go by way of the Ottawa. The Indians had promised 
to conduct the two Frenchmen overland to the North Sea ; but 
Radisson deemed it wise not to reveal this fact lest other voya- 
geurs should fore- 
stall them. Some- 
how the secret 
leaked out. Either 
Groseillers told it 
or his wife dropped 
some hint of it to 
her father confes- 
sor ; but the two 
explorers were 
amazed to receive 
official orders to 
conduct the Jesuits 
to the North Sea by 
way of the Sague- 
nay. They refused 
point-blank to go as 
subordinates on any 
expedition. The fur 
trade was at this 
time regulated by 
license. Any one 
who proceeded to 
the woods without 
license was liable to 
imprisonment, the 
galleys for life, 
death if the offense 
were repeated. 



RELATION 

DE CE QVI S'EST PASSE 

DE PLVS REMARQ.VABLE 

AVX MISSIONS DES PERES 
De la Compagnie dc I e s v s 

E N - L A 

NOyVELLE FRANCE. 

es anne'cs i6 6z.6c i <J 6 3. 

Emoyee an R. P. jindre Qaftillon , Pro- 

ii'mcid de la Promhce de Jp'rance, 




A PARIS, 

Chez Sebastien Cramoisy, EcSebast. 

Mabre-Cramoisy, Imprimeurs ordinaitcs 

diiRoy &rdclaReinc,iii'e S. lucqiics,. 

aux CicoCTucs. 



M. DC. LXIV. 
jiF£C F RlVlLLiiZ Di'^ ROT 



TITLE- P.\GE ^ — -JESUIT RELATION OF 1662-1663 



Radisson and Groseillers asked for a license to go north in 1661. 
D'Avaugour, a bluff soldier who had become governor, would 
grant it only on condition of receiving half the profits. Groseillers 
and Radisson set off by night without a license. 



I 12 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



This time the Indian canoes struck off into Lake Superior 
instead of Lake Michigan, and coasted that billowy inland sea 
with its iron shore and shadowy forests. On the northwest side 
of the lake, somewhere between Duluth and Fort William, the 
explorers joined the Crees, and proceeded northwestward with 
them, hunting along that Indian trail to become famous as the 
fur traders' highway - — from Lake Superior to the Lake of the 
Woods. The first white man's fort built west of the Great Lakes, 



1, 




THE JKSUIT MAP OF LAKE SUPERIOR 
(From the Relation of 1670-167 1) 

the terrible famine that winter, and the visits of the Sioux — are 
all a story in themselves. Spring found the explorers following 
the Crees over the height of land from Lake Superior to Hudson 
Bay. As soon as the ice loosened, dugouts were launched, and 
the voyageurs began that hardest of all canoe trips in America, 
through the forest hinterland of Ontario. Here the rivers were 
a stagnant marsh, with outlet hidden by dankest forest growth 
where the light of the sun never penetrated. There the waters 
swollen by spring thaw and broken by the ice jam whirled the 



DISCO\KRS HUDSON BAY I 13 

boats into rapids before the paddlers realized. Tliere was wading 
to mid-waist in ice water. There were nights when camp was 
made on water-soaked moss. There were days when the windfall 
compelled the canoemen to take the canoes out of the water 
and carry them half the time. "At last," writes Radisson, "we 
came to the sea, where we found an old house all demolished 
and battered with bullets. The Crees told us about Europeans 
being here ; and we went from isle to isle all that summer." 
At this time the canoes must have been coasting the south 
shore of James Bay, headed east ; for Radisson presently ex- 
plains that they came to a river, which rose in a lake near the 
source of the Saguenay — namely Rupert River. What was 
the old house battered with bullets ? Was it Hudson's winter 
fort of 1610-1611 ? The Indians of Rupert River to this day 
have legends of Hudson having come back to his fort when cast 
away by the mutineers. 

The furs that Radisson and Groseillers brought back from 
the north this time were worth fabulous wealth. The cargo saved 
New France from bankruptcy ; but the explorers had defied 
both Church and Governor, and all the greedy monopolists of 
Quebec fell on Radisson and Groseillers with jealous fury. 
They were fined ^20,000 to build a fort at Three Rivers, 
though given permission to inscribe their coats of arms on the 
gate. A $30,000 fine went to the public treasury of New 
France, and a tax of $70,000 was imposed by the Farmers of 
the Revenue. Of the total cargo there was left to Radisson 
and" Groseillers only $20,000. 

Disgusted, the two explorers personally appealed to the Court 
of France ; but there the monopolists were all-powerful, and 
justice was denied. They tried to induce some of the fishing 
fleet off Cape Breton to venture to the North Sea ; but there 
the monopolists' malign influence was again felt. They were ac- 
cused of having broken the laws of Quebec. Zechariah Gillam, 
a sea captain of Boston, who chanced to be at Port Royal, offered 
them his vessel for a voyage to Hudson Bay ; but when the 



114 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE xNORTH 



doughty captain came to the ice-locked straits, his courage 
failed and he refused to enter. Finally, at Port Royal, with the 
last of their meager and dwindling capital, they hired two ships 
for a voyage ; but one was wrecked on Sable Island while fish- 
ing for supplies, and instead of sailing for Hudson Bay in 1665, 
Radisson and Groseillers were summoned to Boston in a law- 
suit over the lost vessel. 

In Boston they met 
commissioners of the Eng- 
lish government and were 
invited to lay their plans 
before Charles II, King of 
England. At last the tide 
of fortune seemed to be 
turning. Sailing with Sir 
George Carterett, after 
pirate raid and shipwreck, 
they reached London to 
find the plague raging, 
and were ordered to 
Windsor, where Charles 
received them, recom- 
mended their venture to 
Prince Rupert, and pro- 
vided ^£2 a week each for 
their living expenses. 
From being penniless 
outcasts, Radisson and Groseillers suddenly wakened to find 
themselves famous. Groseillers seems to have kept in the back- 
ground, but Radisson, the younger man, enjoyed the full blaze 
of glory, was seen in the King's box at the theater, and was 
presently paying furious court to Mistress Mary Kirke, daughter 
of Sir John Kirke, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. What 
with war and the plague, it was 1668 before the English Admi- 
ralty could loan the two ships Eaglet and Xonsnch for a voyage 
to Hudson Bay. The expense was to be defrayed by a band of 




CHARLES II 



ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FUR COMPANY 



115 



friends known as the " Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trad- 
ing to Hudson Bay," subscribing so much stock in cash, provision, 
and goods for trade. Radisson's ship, the Eaglet, was driven back, 
damaged by storm ; but the other, under Groseillers, went on to 
Hudson Bay, where the marks set up on the overland voyage 
were found at Rupert River, and a small fort was built for trade. 
During the delay Radisson was not idle in London. He wrote 
the journals of his first four voyages. He married Mary Kirke 
— some accounts say, eloped with her. With the help of King 
Charles and Prince Rupert he organized what is now known 
as the Hudson's Bay Fur Company ; for when Groseillers' ship 
returned in the fall of 1669, its success in trade had been so 
great that the Adventurers at once applied for a royal charter 
of exclusive monopoly in trade to all the regions, land and sea, 
rivers and territories, adjoining Hudson Bay. The monopoly 
of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Great Northwest was 
granted by King Charles in May, 1670. 

Here, then, was the situation. England was intrenched south 
of the St. Lawrence. England was taking armed possession of 
all lands bordering on Hudson Bay and such other lands as the 
Adventurers might find. Wedged between was New France 
with a population of less than six thousand. If France could 
have foreseen what her injustice to two poor adventurers would 
cost the nation in blood and money, it would have paid her to 
pension Radisson like a prince of the blood royal. 

Note to Chapter VI. The viceroys of New France were shifted so fre- 
quently that little record remains of several but their names. The official list of 
the governors under the French regime stands as follows : 

Samuel de Champlain, died at Quebec, Christmas, 1635. 

Marc Antoine de Chasteaufort, /;-f teiu. 

Charles Huault de Montmagny, 1636. 

Louis d'Ailleboust of the Montreal Crusaders, 1648. 

Jean de Lauzon, 1651. 

Charles de Lauzon-Charny (%ovi), pro fern. 

Louis d'Ailleboust, 1657. 

Viscount d'Argenson, 1658, a young man who quarreled with Jesuits. 

Viscount d'Avagour, 1661, a bluff soldier, who also quarreled with Jesuits. 

De Mezy, 1663, appointed by Jesuits' influence, but quarreled with them. 



Il6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Marquis de Tracy, 1663, who was viceroy of all French possessions in America, 

and really sent out to act as general. 
De Courcelle, 1665, who acts as governor under De Tracy and succeeds him. 
Frontenac, 1672, was recalled through influence of Jesuits, whose interference he 

would not tolerate in civil affairs. 
De La Barre, 1682, an impotent, dishonest old man, who came to mend his 

fortunes. 
De Brisay de Denonville, 16S5. 
Frontenac, 1689. 
De Calliere, 1699. 
Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1703. 
Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1725, son of Le Moyne, the famous fighter 

and interpreter of Montreal ; brother of Le Moyne d'Iberville, the commander. 
Marquis de Beauharnois, 1726. 
Count de la Galissoniere, 1747. 
Marquis de la Jonquiere, 1749. 

Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1752, son of former Governor. 
Duquesne, 1752. 
Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1755, descendant of first Vaudreuil. 



CHAPTER VII 

FROM 1672 TO 1688 

While Radisson and other coureurs of the woods were rang- 
ing the wilds from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi and 
from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay, changes were almost 
revolutionizing the little colony of New France. No longer 
was everything subservient to missions. When Marguerite 
Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance, of Ville-Marie Mission at Mon- 
treal, went home to France to bring out more colonists in 1659, 
they learned that the founder of their mission — Dauversiere, 
the tax collector — had gone bankrupt. Montreal was penniless, 
though sixty more men and thirty-two girls were accompanying 
the nuns out this very year. The Sulpician priests had from the 
first been ardent friends of the Montrealers. The priests of 
St. Sulpice now assumed charge of Montreal. Though "God's 
Penny " was still collected at the fairs and market places of Old 
France for the conversion of Indians at Mont Royal, the fur 
trade was rapidly changing the character of the place. 

Afraid of the Irocjuois raiders, the tribes of the Up-Country 
now flocked to Montreal instead of Quebec, where the traders 
met them annually at the great Fur Fairs. 

No more picturesque scene exists in Canada's past than these 
Fur Fairs. Down the rapids of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence 
bounded the canoes of the Indian hunters, Hurons and Potta- 
watomies from Lake Michigan, Crees and Ojibways from Lake 
Superior, Iroquois and Fries and Neutrals from what is now 
the Province of Ontario, the northern Indians in long birch 
canoes light as paper, the Indians of Ontario in dugouts of oak 
and walnut. The Fur Fair usually took place between June and 
August ; and the Viceroy, magnificent in red cloak faced with 
velvet and ornamented with gold braid, came up from Quebec 

117 



Il8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

for the occasion and occupied a chair of state under a mar- 
quee erected near the Indian tents. Wigwams then went up 
Hke mushrooms, the Huron and Iroquois tents of sewed bark 
hung in the shape of a square from four poles, the tepees of the 
Upper Indians made of birch and buffalo hides, hung on poles 
crisscrossed at the top to a peak, spreading in wide circle to the 
ground. Usually the Fur Fair occupied a great common between 
St. Paul Street and the river. Furs unpacked, there stalked 
among the tents great sachems glorious in robes of painted 
buckskin garnished with wampum, Indian children stark naked, 
young braves flaunting and boastful, wearing headdresses with 
strings of eagle quills reaching to the ground, each quill signify- 
ing an enemy taken. Then came " the peddlers," — the fur mer- 
chants, — unpacking their goods to tempt the Indians, men of the 
colonial noblesse famous in history, the Forests and Le Chesnays 
and Le Bers. Here, too, gorgeous in finery, bristling with fire- 
arms, were the bushrovers, the interpreters, the French voyageurs, 
who had to come out of the wilds once every two years to renew 
their licenses to trade. There w'as Charles Le Moyne, son of an 
innkeeper of Dieppe, who had come to Montreal as interpreter 
and won such wealth as trader that his family became members 
of the French aristocracy. Two of his descendants became gov- 
ernors of Canada ; and the history of his sons is the history of 
Canada's most heroic age. There was Louis Jolliet, who had 
studied for the Jesuit priesthood but turned fur trader among 
the tribes of Lake Michigan. There was Daniel Greysolon 
Duluth, a man of good birth, ample means, and with the finest 
house in Montreal, who had turned bushrover, gathered round 
him a band of three or four hundred lawless, dare-devil French 
hunters, and now roamed the woods from Detroit halfway to 
Hudson Bay, swaying the Indians in favor of France and ruling 
the wilds, sole lord of the wilderness. There were Groseillers and 
Radisson and a shy young man of twenty-five who had obtained 
a seigniory from the Sulpicians at Lachine — Robert Cavelier 
de La Salle. Sometimes, too, Father Marquette came down with 
his Indians from the missions on Lake Superior. Maisonneuve, 



THE FUR FAIRS OF MONTREAL 



119 



too, was there, grieving, no doubt, to see this Kingdom of Heaven, 
which he had set up on earth, becoming more and more a king- 
dom of this world. Later, when the Hundred Associates lost 
their charter and Canada became a Royal Province governed 
directly by the Crown, Maisonneuve was deprived of the gov- 
ernment of Montreal and retired to die in obscurity in Paris. 
Louis d'Ailleboust, Governor of Montreal when Maisonneuve 
is absent. Governor at Quebec when state necessities drag him 
from religious devotion, moves also in the gay throng of the 




fi^i^ 



(//£■ 



5r '- ^^^ 



PLAN or MONTREAU 

Snc<»ina laCATien gr CAi^H Sl/iLOi/*Q- 



PLAN OF MONTRE.AL IN 1672 



P'ur Fair. In later days is a famous character at the Fur Fairs 
■ — La Motte Cadillac of Detroit, bushrover and gentleman like 
Duluth, but prone to break heads when he comes to town 
where the wine is good. 

Trade was regulated by royal license. Only twenty-five canoes 
a year were allowed to go to the woods with three men in each, 
and a license was good for only two years. Fines, branding, the 
galleys for life, death, were the penalties for those who traded 
without license ; but that did not prevent more than one thou- 
sand young Frenchmen running off to the woods to live like 
Indians. In fact, there was no other way for the youth of New 



I20 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

France to earn a living. Penniless young noblemen, criminals 
escaping the law, the sons of the poorest, all were on the same 
footing in the woods. He who could persuade a merchant to 
outfit him for trade disappeared in the wilds ; and if he came 
back at all, came back with wealth of furs and bought off punish- 
ment, " wearing sword and lace and swaggering as if he were a 
gentleman," the annals of the day complain ; and a long session 
in the confessional box relieved the prodigal's conscience from 
the sins of a life in the woods. If my young gentleman were rich 
enough, the past was forgotten, and he was now on the highroad 
to distinguished service and perhaps a title. 

In the early days a beaver skin could be bought for a needle 
or a bell or a tin mirror ; and in spite of all the priests could do 
to prevent it, brandy played a shameful part in the trade. In 
vain the priests preached against it, and the bishop thundered 
anathemas. The evils of the brandy traffic were apparent to all 
— the Fur Fairs became a bedlam of crime ; but when the Gov- 
ernor called in all the traders to confer on the subject, it was 
plain that if the Indians did not obtain liquor from the French, 
they would go on down with their furs to the English of New 
York, and the French Governor was afraid to forbid the evil. 

The Fur Fair over, the Governor departed for Quebec ; the 
Indians, for their own land ; the bushrovers, for their far wan- 
derings ; and there settled over Montreal for another year 
drowsy quiet but for the chapel bells of St. Sulpice and Ville 
Marie and Bon Secours — the Chapel of Ste. Anne's Good Help 
— built close on the verge of the river, that the voyageurs com- 
ing and going might cross themselves as they passed her spire ; 
drowsy peace but for the chapel chimes ringing . . . ringing . . . 
ringing . . . morning . . . noon . . . and night . . . lilting and sing- 
ing and calling all New France to prayers. As the last canoe 
glided up the river, and sunset silence fell on Montreal, there 
knelt before the dimly lighted altars of the chapels, shadow 
figures — Maisonneuve praying for his mission ; D'Ailleboust, 
asking Heaven's blessing on the new shrine down at St. Anne 
de Beaupre near Quebec, which he had built for the miraculous 




I, A SALLE S HOUSE NEAR MONTREAL 




KITCHEN, CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY, MONTREAL 



CUSTOMS OF PEOPLE 12 1 

healing of physical ills ; Dollier de Casson, priest of the wilds, 
manly and portly and strong, wilderness fighter for the Cross. 
Then the organ swells, and the chant rolls out, and till the next 
Fur Fair Montreal is again a mission. 

When New France becomes a Crown Colony, the government 
consists solely and only of the Sovereign Council, to whom the 
King transmits his will. This council consists of the Governor, 
his administrative officer called the " Intendant," the bishop, 
and several of the inhabitants of New France nominated by the 
other members of the council. Of elections there are absolutely 
none. Popular meetings are forbidden. New France is a des- 
potism, with the Sovereign Council representing the King. 
Domestic disputes, religious quarrels, civil cases, crimes, — all 
come before the Sovereign Council. Clients could plead their 
own cases without a fee, or hire a notary. Cases are tried 
by the Sovereign Council. Laws are passed by it. Fines are 
imposed and sentences pronounced ; but as the Sovereign Coun- 
cil met only once a week, the management of affairs fell chiefly 
to the Intendant, whose palace became known as the Place of 
Justice. Of systematic taxation there was none. One fourth of 
all beaver went for public revenue. Part of Labrador was re- 
served as the King's Domain for trading, and sometimes a 
duty of ten per cent was charged on liquor brought into the 
colony. The stroke of the Sovereign Council's pen could create 
a law, and the stroke of the King's pen annul it. Laws are 
passed forbidding men, who are not nobles, assuming the title 
of Esquire or Sieur on penalty of what would be a $500 fine. 
"Wood is not to be piled on the streets." "Chimneys are to be 
built large enough to admit a chimney sweep." "Only shingles 
of oak and walnut may be used in towns where there is danger 
of fire." Swearing is punished by fines, by the disgrace of 
being led through the streets at the end of a rope and begging 
pardon on knees at the church steps, by branding if the offense 
be repeated. Murderers are punished by being shot, or exposed 
in an iron cage on the cliffs above the St. Lawrence till death 



122 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



comes. No detail is too small for the Sovereign Council's notice. 
In fact, a case is on record where a Mademoiselle Andre is ex- 
pelled from the colony for flirting so outrageously with young 
officers that she demoralizes the garrison. Mademoiselle avoids 
the punishment by bribing one of the officers on the ship where 
she is placed, and escaping to land in man's clothing. 

The people of New 
France were regulated 
in every detail of their 
lives by the Church as 
well as the Sovereign 
Council. For trading 
brandy to the Indians, 
Bishop Laval thunders 
excommunication at de- 
linquents ; and Bishop 
St. Valliere, his succes- 
sor, publicly rebukes 
the dames of New 
France for wearing low- 
necked dresses, and 
curling their hair, and 
donning gay ribbons in 
place of bonnets. " The 
vanity of dress among 
women becomes a 
greater scandal than 
before," he complains. 
" They affect immodest headdress, with heads uncovered or 
only concealed under a collection of ribbons, laces, curls, and 
other vanities." 

The laws came from the King and Sovereign Council. The 
enforcement of them depended on the Intendant. As long as 
he was a man of integrity. New France might live as happily 
as a family under a despotic but wise father. It was when the 
Intendant became corrupt that the system fell to pieces. 




L.AVAL 
(After the portrait in Laval University, Quebec) 



SHIPLOADS OF BRIDES 123 

Of all the intendants of New France, one name stands pre- 
eminent, that of Jean Talon, who came to Canada, aged forty, 
in 1665, at the time the country became a Crown Province. 
One of eleven children of Irish origin, Talon had been educated 
at the Jesuit College of Paris, and had served as an intendant 
in France before coming to Canada. Officially he was to stand 
between the King and the colony, to transmit the commands 
of one and the wants of the other. He was to stand between 
the Governor and the colony, to watch that the Governor did 
not overstep his authority and that the colony obeyed the laws. 
He was to stand between the Church and the colony, to see 
that the Church did not usurp the prerogatives of the Governor 
and that the people were kept in the path of right living without 
having their natural liberties curtailed. He was, in a word, to 
accept the thankless task of taking all the cuffs from the King 
and the kicks from the colony, all the blame of whatever went 
amiss and no credit for what went well. 

When Talon came to Canada there were less than two thou- 
sand people in the colony. He wrote frantically to His Royal 
Master for colonists. "We cannot depeople France to people 
Canada," wrote the King; but from his royal revenue he set 
aside money yearly to send men to Canada as soldiers, women 
as wives. In 1671 one hundred and sixty-five girls were sent 
out to be wedded to the French youth. A year later came one 
hundred and fifty more. Licenses would not be given to the 
wood rovers for the fur trade unless they married. Bachelors 
were fined unless they quickly chose a wife from among the 
King's girls. Promotion was withheld from the young ensigns 
and cadets in the army unless they found brides. Yearly the 
ships brought girls whom the cures of France had carefully 
selected in country parishes. Yearly Talon gave a bounty to 
the middle-aged duenna who had safely chaperoned her charges 
across seas to the convents of Quebec and Montreal, where the 
bashful suitors came to make choice. " We want country girls, 
who can work," wrote the Intendant ; and girls who could 
work the King sent, instructing Talon to mate as many as he 



124 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

could to officers of the Carignan Regiment, so that the soldiers 
would be likely to turn settlers. Results : by 1674 Canada had 
a population of six thousand seven hundred; by 1684, of nearly 
twelve thousand, not counting the one thousand bush lopers 
who roamed the woods and married squaws. 

Between Acadia and Quebec lay wilderness. Jean Talon 
opened a road connecting the two far-separated provinces. The 
Sovereign Council had practically outlawed the bush lopers. Talon 
pronounced trade free, and formed them into companies of bush 
fighters — defenders of the colony. Instead of being wild-wood 
bandits, men like Uuluth at Lake Superior and La Motte Cadil- 
lac at Detroit became commanders, holding vast tribes loyal to 
France. For years there had been legends of mines. Talon opened 
mines at Gaspe and Three Rivers and Cape Breton. All clothing 
had formerly been imported from France. Talon had the inhabit- 
ants taught — and they badly needed it, for many of their chil- 
dren ran naked as Indians — to weave their own clothes, make 
rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats, — all of which they do to 
this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a 
single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps 
a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. " The Jesuits 
assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened 
their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada 
and by encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young 
Frenchmen for deserting to the English, Talon asked the King to 
grant titles of nobility to those who were loyal, like the Godefrois 
and the Denis' and the Le Moynes and young Chouart Groseillers, 
son of Radisson's brother-in-law, so that there sprang up a Cana- 
dian noblesse which was as graceful with the frying pan of a night 
camp fire in the woods as with the steps of a stately dance in the 
governor's ballroom. Above all did Talon encourage the bush- 
rovers in their far wanderings to explore new lands for France. 

New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the 
French colony at Onondaga. Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept 
the hostility of these sleepless foes fresh in French memory. 



THE IROQUOIS AND DE TRACY 125 

When Jean Talon came to Canada as intendant, there had 
come as governor Courcelle, with the Marquis de Tracy as 
major general of all the French forces in America, — the West 
Indies as well as Canada. The Carignan Regiment of soldiers 
seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the 
colonists from Indian raid ; and it was determined to strike the 
Iroquois Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of 
the French in their hearts. 

Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior ; 
and De Tracy sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream 
at Sorel and Chambly — named after officers of the regiment. 
January, 1666, Courcelle, the Governor, set out on snowshoes to 
invade the Iroquois Country with five hundred men, half Cana- 
dian bushrovers, half regular soldiers. By some mistake the 
snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong road 
followed, and the French Governor found himself among the 
Dutch at Schenectady. March rains had set in. Through the 
leafless forests in driving sleet and rain retreated the French. 
Sixty had perished from exposure and disease before Courcelle 
led his men back to the Richelieu. The Mohawk warriors 
showed their contempt for this kind of white-man warfare by 
raiding some F'rench hunters on Lake Champlain and killing a 
young nephew of De Tracy. 

Nevertheless, on second thought, twenty-four Indian deputies 
proceeded to Quebec with the surviving captives to sue for 
peace. De Tracy was ready for them. Solemnly the peace pipe 
had been puffed and solemnly the peace powwow held. The 
Mohawk chief was received in pompous state at the Governor's 
table. Heated with wine and mistaking French courtesy for 
fear, the warrior grew boastful at the white chief's table. 

"This is the hand," he exclaimed, proudly stretching out his 
right arm, " this is the hand that split the head of your young 
man, O Onontio ! " 

"Then by the power of Heaven," thundered the Marquis de 
Tracy, springing to his feet ablaze with indignation, "it is the 
hand that shall never split another head ! " 



126 



CANADA : THE EMPIRP: OF THE NORTH 



Forthwith the body of the great Mohawk chief dangled a 
scarecrow to the fowls of the air ; and the other terrified depu- 
ties tore breathlessly back for the Iroquois land with such a 
story as one may guess. 

With thirteen hundred men and three hundred boats the 
Marquis de Tracy and Courcelle set out from the St. Law- 
rence in October for the Iroquois cantons. Charles Le Moyne, 




A MAP IN THE RELATION OF 1662-1663 

(This map includes Lake Ontario and the Iroquois Country. It shows the relative 

positions of the Five Nations and Fort d'Orange (Albany). It also gives 

plans of the forts on the Richelieu and shows their location) 

the Montreal bushrover, led six hundred wild-wood followers in 
their buckskin coats and beaded moccasins, with hair flying to 
the wind like Indians ; and one hundred Huron braves were also 
in line with the Canadians. The rest of the forces were of the 
Carignan Regiment. Dollier de Casson, the Sulpician priest, 
powerful of frame as De Tracy himself, marched as chaplain. 
Never had such an expedition been seen before on the St. 
Lawrence. Drums beat reveille at peep of dawn. Fifes out- 
shrilled the roar of rapids, and stately figures in gold braid 



WHO FIRST FOUND ONTARIO? 127 

and plumed hats glided over the waters of the Richelieu among 
the painted forests of the frost-tinted maples. Indians have a 
way of conveying news that modern trappers designate as " the 
moccasin telegram." " Moccasin telegram " now carried news 
of the coming army to the Irocjuois villages, and the alarm ran 
like wildfire from Mohawk to Onondaga and from Onondaga to 
Seneca. When the French army struck up the Mohawk River, 
and to beat of drum charged in full fury out of the rain-dripping 
forests across the stubble fields to attack the first palisaded vil- 
lage, they found it desolate, deserted, silent as the dead, though 
winter stores crammed the abandoned houses and wildest confu- 
sion showed that the warriors had fled in panic. So it was with 
the next village and the next. The Iroquois had stampeded in 
blind flight, and the only show of opposition was a wild whoop 
here and there from ambush. De Tracy took possession of the 
land for France, planted a cross, and ordered the villages set on 
fire. For a time, at least, peace was assured with the Iroc^uois. 

Who first discovered the Province of Ontario .? Before Cham- 
plain had ascended the Ottawa, or the Jesuits established their 
missions south of Lake Huron, young men sent out as wood 
rovers had canoed up the Ottawa and gone westward to the 
land of the Sweet Water Seas. Was it Vignau, the romancer, 
or Nicolet, the coureur de bois, or the boy Etienne Brule, who 
first saw what has been called the Garden of Canada, the rolling 
meadows and wooded hills that lie wedged in between the Upper 
and the Lower of the Great Lakes ? Tradition says it was Brule ; 
but however that may be, little was known of what is now On- 
tario except in the region of the old Jesuit missions around 
Georgian Bay. It was not even known that Michigan and 
Huron were /ivo lakes. The Sulpicians of Montreal had a miS"- 
sion at the Bay of Quinte on Lake Ontario, and the south 
shore of the lake, where it touched on Iroquois territory, was 
known to the Jesuits ; but from Quinte Bay to Detroit — a dis- 
tance equal to that from New York to Chicago, or London to 
Italy — was an unknown world. 



128 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

But to return to the explorations which Jean Talon, the 
Intendant, had set in motion- — 

When Dollier de Casson, the soldier who had become Sulpician 
priest, returned from the campaign against the Iroquois, he had 
been sent as a missionary to the Nipissing Country. There he 
heard among the Indians of a shorter route to the Great River 
of the West — the Mississippi — than by the Ottawa and Sault 
Ste. Marie. The Indians told him if he would ascend the St. 
Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, he could portage 
overland to the Beautiful River, — Ohio, — -which would carry 
him down to the Mississippi. 

The Sulpicians had been encouraged by Talon in order to 
eclipse and hold in check the Jesuits. They were eager to send 
their missionaries to the new realm of this Great River, and 
hurried Dollier de Casson down to Quebec to obtain Intendant 
Talon's permission. 

There, curiously enough, Dollier de Casson met Cavalier de 
La Salle, the shy young seigneur of La Chine, intent on almost 
the same aim, — to explore the Great River. Where the Sulpicians 
had granted him his seigniory above Montreal he had built a 
fort, which soon won the nickname of La Chine, — China, — be- 
cause its young master was continually entertaining Iroquois 
Indians within the walls, to c^uestion them of the Great River, 
which might lead to China. 

Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon ordered the priest 
and young seigneur to set out together on their explorations. 
The Sulpicians were to bear all expenses, buying back La Salle's 
lands to enable him to outfit canoes with the money. Father 
Galinee, who understood map making, accompanied Dollier de 
Casson, and the expedition of seven birch canoes, with three 
white men in each, and two dugouts with Seneca Indians, who 
had been visiting La Salle, set out from Montreal on July 6, 
1669. Not a leader in the ]:)arty was over thirty-five years of 
age. Dollier de Casson, the big priest, was only thirty-three and 
La Salle barely twenty-six. Corn meal was carried as food. 
For the rest, they were to depend on chance shots. With 



THROUGH WESTERN ONTARIO 



129 



numerous portages, keeping to the south shore of the St. 
Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, 
the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and 
glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, 
coming out in August on Lake Ontario, " which," says Galinee, 
" appeared to us like a great sea." Striking south, they appealed 
to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas 
were so intent on torturing some prisoners recently captured. 







galinee's map of the great lakes, 1669 

(The next oldest chart to that of Champlain) 

that they paid no heed to the appeal. A month was wasted, 
and the white men proceeded with Indian slaves for guides, still 
along the south shore of the lake. 

At the mouth of Niagara River they could hear the far roar 
of the famous falls, which Indian legend said " fell over rocks 
twice the height of the highest pine tree." The turbulent tor- 
rent of the river could not be breasted, so they did not see the 
falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario to the region now near 
the city of Hamilton. Here they had prepared to portage over- 
land to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie, 
when, to their amazement, they learned from a passing Indian 
camp that two Frenchmen were on their way down this very 
lake from searching copper mines on Lake Superior. 



I30 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

The two Frenchmen were Louis Jolhet, yet in his early 
twenties, to become famous as an explorer of the Mississippi, 
and one Monsieur Jean Pere, soldier of fortune, who was to set 
France and England by the ears on Hudson Bay. September 24, 
as La Salle and Dollier were dragging their canoes through the 
autumn-colored sumacs of the swamp, there plunged from among 
the russet undergrowth the two wanderers from the north, • — 
Jolliet and Pere, dumb with amazement to meet a score of men 
toiling through this tenantless wilderness. The two parties fell 
on each other's necks with delight and camped together. Jolliet 
told a story that set the missionaries' zeal on fire and inflamed 
La Salle with mad eagerness to pass on to the goal of his dis- 
coveries. Jolliet and Pere had not found the copper mine for 
Talon on Lake Superior, but they had learned two important 
secrets from the Indians. First, if Iroquois blocked the way up 
the Ottawa, there was clear, easy water way down to Quebec by 
Lake Huron and Lake Ste. Claire and Lake Erie. Jolliet's guide 
had brought them down this way, first of white men to traverse 
the Great Lakes, only leaving them as they reached Lake Erie 
and advising them to portage across up Grand River to avoid 
Niagara Falls. Second, the Indians told him the Ohio could 
be reached by way of Lake Erie. 

Sitting round the camp fires near what is now Port Stanley, 
La Salle secretly resolved to go on down to Quebec with Jolliet 
and rearrange his plans independent of the missionaries. The 
portaging through swamps had affected La Salle's health, and 
he probably judged he could make quicker time unaccompanied 
by missionaries. As for Galinee and Dollier, when they knelt 
in prayer that night, they fervently besought Heaven to let them 
carry the Gospel of truth to those benighted heathen west of 
Lake Michigan, of whom Jolliet told. Dollier de Casson sent a 
letter by Jolliet to Montreal, begging the Sulpicians to establish 
a mission near what is now Toronto. Early next morning an 
altar was laid on the propped paddles of the canoes and solemn 
service held. La Salle and his four canoes went back to Montreal 
with Jolliet and Pere ; Dollier and Galinee coasted along the 
shores of Lake Erie westward. 



UP THE (IREAT LAKES 13 I 

It was October. The forests were leafless, the weather damj), 
the lake too stormy for the frail canoes. As game was plentiful, 
the priests decided to winter on a creek near Port Dover. Here 
log houses were knocked up, and the servants dispersed moose 
hunting for winter supplies. Then followed the most beautiful 
season of the year in the peninsula of Ontario, Indian summer, 
dreamy warm days after the first cold, filling the forest with a 
shimmer of golden light, the hills with heat haze, while the air 
was odorous with smells of nuts and dried leaves and grapes 
hanging thick from wild vines. " It was," writes Galinee, 
" simply an Earthly Paradise, the most beautiful region that 
ever I have seen in my life, with open woods and meadows and 
rivers and game in plenty." In this Earthly Paradise the priests 
passed the winter, holding services three times a week — "a 
winter that ought to be worth ten years of any other kind of 
life " Dollier calculated, counting up masses and vespers and 
matins. Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird 
voices of the wind hallooed with bugle sound through the 
lonely forest, the priests listening inside fancied that they 
heard "the hunting of Arthur," — unearthly huntsmen cours- 
ing the air after unearthly game. 

March 23 (Sunday), 1670, the company paraded down to Lake 
Erie from their sheltered quarters, and, erecting a cross, took 
possession of this land for France. Then they launched their 
boats to ascend the other Sweet Water Seas. The preceding 
autumn the priests had lost some of their baggage, and now, in 
camp near Point Pelee, a sweeping wave carried off the packs 
in which were all the holy vessels and equipments for the mis- 
sion chapel. They decided to go back to Montreal by way of 
Sault Ste. Marie, and ascended to Lake Ste. Claire. Game had 
been scarce for some days, the weather tempestuous, and now 
the priests thought they had found the cause. On one of the 
rocks of Lake Ste. Claire was a stone, to which the Indians of- 
fered sacrifices for safe passage on the lakes. To the priests 
the rude drawing of a face seemed graven images of paganism, 
— signs of Satan, who had baffled their hunting" and caused loss 



132 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

of their packs. " I consecrated one of my axes to break this god 
of stone, and, having yoked our canoes abreast, we carried the 
largest pieces to the middle of the river and cast them in. God 
immediately rewarded us, for we killed a deer." Following the 
east shore of Lake Huron, the priests came, on May 25, to Sault 
Ste. Marie, where the Jesuits Dablon and Marquette had a mis- 
sion. Three days late, they embarked by way of the Ottawa for 
Montreal, where they arrived on June 18, 1670. 

Meanwhile, what had become of Jolliet and Pere and La Salle ? 

They have no sooner reached Quebec with their report than 
Talon orders St. Lusson to go north and take possession at Sault 
Ste. Marie of all these unknown lands for France. Jolliet accom- 
panies St. Lusson. Nicholas Perrot, a famous bushrover, goes 
along to summon the Lidians, and the ceremony takes place on 
June 14, 1671, in the presence of the Jesuits at the Sault, by 
which the King of France is pronounced lord paramount of all 
these regions. 

When Jolliet comes down again to Quebec, he finds Count 
Frontenac has come as governor, and Jean Talon, the Intendant, 
is sailing for France. Before leaving. Talon has recommended 
Jolliet as a fit man to explore the Great River of the West. 
With him is commissioned Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit, who 
has labored among the Indians west of Lake Superior. The two 
men set out in birch canoes, with smoked meat for provisions, 
from Michilimackinac mission, May 17, 1673, for Green Bay, 
Lake Michigan. Ascending Fox River on June 17, they induce 
the Mascoutin Indians, who had years ago conducted Radisson 
by this same route, to pilot them across the portage to the 
headwaters of the Wisconsin River. 

Their way lies directly across that wooded lake region, which 
has in our generation become the resort first of the lumberman, 
then of the tourist, — a rolling, wooded region of rare sylvan 
beauty, park -like forests interspersed with sky-colored lakes. Six 
weeks from the time they had left the Sault, Wisconsin River 
carried their canoe out on the swift eddies of a mighty river 



MARQUETTE AND JOLLIET I 33 

flowing south, — the Mississippi. For the first time the boat of 
a Canadian voyageur glided down its waters. 

Each night as the explorers landed to sleep under the stars, 
the tilted canoe inverted with end on a log as roof in case of 
rain, Marquette fell to knees and invoked the Virgin's aid on 
the expedition ; and each morning as Jolliet launched the boat 
out on the waters tlnough the early mist, he headed closely 
along shore on the watch for sign or footprint of Indian. 

The river gathered volume as it rolled southward, carving the 
clay cliffs of its banks in a thousand fantastic forms. Where the 
bank was broken, the prairies were seen in heaving seas of grass 
billowing to the wind like water, herds of countless buffalo pas- 
turing knee-deep. To Marquette and Jolliet, burning with en- 
thusiasm, it seemed as if they were finding a new world for 
France half as large as all Europe. For two weeks not a sail, 
not a canoe, not a soul did they see. Then the river carried 
them into the country of the Illinois, past Illinois Indians who 
wore French clothing, and pictured rocks where the Indians had 
painted their sign language. There was no doubt now in the 
explorers' minds, — the Mississippi did not lead to China but 
emptied in the Gulf of Mexico. A furious torrent of boiling 
muddy water pouring in on the right forewarned the Missouri ; 
and in a few more days they passed on the left the clear current 
of Beautiful River, — the Ohio. 

It was now midsummer. The heat was heavy and humid. 
Marquette's health began to suffer, and the two explorers spread 
an awning of sailcloth above the canoe as they glided with the 
current. Towards the Arkansas, Indians appeared on the banks, 
brandishing weapons of Spanish make. Though Jolliet, with a 
peace pipe from the Illinois Indians, succeeded in reassuring the 
hostiles, it was unsafe to go farther south. They had established 
the fact, — the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, — 
and on July 17 turned back. It was harder going against stream, 
which did not mend Marquette's health ; so when the Illinois 
Indians offered to show them a shorter way to Lake Michigan, 
they followed up Illinois River and crossed the Chicago portage 



134 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



to Lake Michigan. Jolliet went on down to Quebec with his 
report. Marquette remained half ill to establish missions in 
Michigan. Here, traveling with his Indians in 1675, the priest 
died of the malady contracted in the Mississippi heat, and was 
buried in a lonely grave of the wildwood wilderness where he 
had wandered. Louis Jolliet married and settled down on his 
seigniory of Anticosti Island. 

Though he had as yet little to show for the La Chine estate, 
which he had sacrificed, La Salle had not been idle, but was busy 
pushing French dominion by another route to the Mississippi. 

Count Frontenac had come to New France as all the viceroys 
came — penniless, to mend his fortunes; and as the salary of 
the Governor did not exceed $3000 a year, the only way to 
wealth was by the fur trade ; but which way to look for fur 
trade ! Hudson Bay, thanks to Radisson, was in the hands of 
England. Taudoussac was farmed out to the King. The mer- 
chants of Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal absorbed all 
the furs of the tribes from the Ottawa ; and New England drained 
the Iroquois land. There remained but one avenue of new trade, 
and that was west of the Lakes, where Jolliet had been. 

Taking only La Salle into his confidence, Frontenac issued a 
royal mandate commanding all the officers and people of New 
France to contribute a quota of men for the establishment of a 
fort on Lake Ontario. By June 28, 1673, the same year that 
Jolliet had been dispatched for the Mississippi, there had gathered 
at La Chine, La Salle's old seigniory near Montreal, four hundred 
armed men and one hundred and twenty canoes, which Frontenac 
ordered painted gaudily in red and blue. With these the Gov- 
ernor moved in stately array up the St. Lawrence, setting the 
leafy avenues of the Thousand Islands ringing with trumpet and 
bugle, and sweeping across Lake Ontario in martial lines to the 
measured stroke of a hundred paddles. 

Long since. La Salle's scouts had scurried from canton to 
canton, rallying the Iroquois to the council of great " Onontio." 
At break of day, July 13, while the sunrise was just bursting up 



FRONTENAC AND LA SALLE 



135 



over the lake, Frontenac, with soldiers drawn up under arms, 
himself in velvet cloak laced with gold braid, met the chiefs of 
the Iroquois Confederacy at the place to be known for years as 
Fort Frontenac, now known as Kingston, a quiet little city at 
the entrance of Lake Ontario on the north shore. 

Ostensibly the powwow was to maintain peace. In reality, 
it was to attract the Iroquois, and all the tribes with whom they 




ROBERT DE LA SALLE 



traded, away from the English, down to Frontenac's new fort with 
their furs. It is a question if all the military pomp deceived a 
living soul. Before the Governor had set his sappers to work 
on the foundations of a fort, the merchants of Montreal — the 
Le Bers and Le Moynes and Le Chesnayes and Le Forests — 
were furious with jealousy. Undoubtedly Fort Frontenac would 
be the most valuable fur post in America. 



136 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Determined to have the support of the Court, where his wife 
was in high favor, Count Frontenac dispatched La Salle to 
France in 1674 with letters of strongest recommendation, 
which, no doubt, Jean Talon, the former Intendant, indorsed on 
the spot. La Salle's case was a strong one. He was to offer to 
found a line of forts establishing French dominion from Lake 
Ontario to the valley of the Mississippi, which Jolliet had just 



V ,J-^. 






^ ^ _^..:.. W^ 









?-'ll)ff/-r rf'' 



\h>' 



OLD PLAN OF FORT FRONTENAC 



explored. In return, he asked for patent of nobility and the 
grant of a seigniory at Fort Frontenac ; in other words, the 
monopoly of the furs there, which would easily clear him 
$20,000 a year. It has never been proved, but one may sus- 
pect that his profits were to be divided with Count Frontenac. 
Both requests were at once granted ; and La Salle came back 
to a hornet's nest of enmity in Canada. Space forbids to tell 
of the means taken to defeat him ; for, by promising to support 
Recollet friars at his fort instead of Jesuits, La Salle had added 



LA SALLE ROUSES ENEMIES 137 

to the enmity of the merchants, the hatred of the Jesuits. 
Poison was put in his food. Iroquois were stirred up to liostility 
against him. 

Meanwhile no enmity checks his ardor. He has replaced 
the wooden walls of F'ort Frontenac with stone, mounted ten 
cannon, manned the fort with twenty soldiers, maintained more 
than forty workmen, cleared one hundred acres for crops, and 
in 1677 is off again for France to ask permission to build another 
fort above Niagara. This time, when La Salle comes out, he is 
accompanied by a man famous in American annals, a soldier of 
fortune from Italy, cousin of Duluth the bushrover, one Henry 
Tonty, a man with a copper hand, his arm having been shattered 
in war, who presently comes to have repute among the Indians 
as a great " medicine man," because blows struck by that metal 
hand have a way of being effective. By 1678 the fort is built 
above Niagara. By 1679 a vessel of forty-five tons and ten 
cannon is launched on Lake Erie, the Griffon, the first vessel 
to plow the waters of the Great Lakes. As she slides off her 
skids, August 17, to go up to Michilimackinac for a cargo of furs, 
Tc Dciiin is chanted from the new fort, and Louis Hennepin, the 
Dutch friar, standing on deck in full vestments, asks Heaven's 
blessing on the ship's venture. 

Scant is the courtesy of the Michilimackinac traders as the 
Griffon's guns roar salute to the fort. Cold is the welcome of 
the Jesuits as La Salle enters their chapel dressed in scarlet 
mantle trimmed with gold. And to be frank, though La Salle 
was backed by the King, he had no right to trade at Michilimacki- 
nac, for his monopoly explicitly states he shall not interfere with 
the trade of the north, but barter only with the tribes towards 
the Illinois. Never mind ! he loads his ships to the water Hne 
with furs to pay his increasing debts, and sends the ship 
on down to Niagara with the cargo, while he and Tonty, with 
different parties, proceed to the south end of Lake Michigan to 
cross the Chicago portage leading to the Mississippi. Did the 
jealous traders bribe the pilot to sink the ship to bottom .? Who 
knows .? Certain it is when Tonty and La Salle went down the 



138 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Illinois early in the new year of 1680, news of disasters came 
thick and fast. The Grijfon had sunk with all her cargo. The 
ship from France with the )'ear's supplies for La Salle at Fort 
Frontenac had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence ; 
and worse than these losses, which meant financial ruin, here 
among the Illinois Indians were Mascoutin Indian spies bribed 
to stir up trouble for La Salle. Small wonder that he named 
the fort built here Fort Crevecoeur, — Fort Broken Heart. 



BUILDING OF TIUC ■■ G flIFFi)>V 




'■w'i^! 



^^^iM^&h.^^ 



-ii JP- til? r * —*Sh£sk^^ . ^. 



-A^^ 




THE BUILDING OF IHE gk/ffo.\ 
(After the engraving in Fatlier Hennepin's " Nouvelle Decouverte," Amsterdam, 1704) 

If La Salle had been fur trader only, as his enemies averred, 
and not patriot, one wonders why he did not sit still in his fort 
at Frontenec and draw his profits of $20,000 a year, instead of 
risking loss and poison and ruin and calumny and death by 
chasing the phantom of his great desire to found a New France 
on the Mississippi. 

Never pausing to repine, he orders Hennepin, the friar, to 
take two voyageurs and descend Illinois River as far as the 
Mississippi. Tonty he leaves in charge of the Illinois fort. He 



LA SALLE DESCENDS THE MISSISSIPPI 139 

himself proceeds overland the width of half a continent, to Fort 
Frontenac and Montreal. 

Friar Hennepin's adventures have been told in his own book 
of marvels, half truth, half lies. Jolliet, it will be remembered, 
had explored the Great River south of the Wisconsin. Henne- 
pin struck up from the mouth of the Illinois, to explore north, 
and he found enough ad\'enture to satisfy his marvel-loving 
soul. The Sioux captured him somewhere near the Wisconsin. 
In the wanderings of his captivity he went as far north as the 
Falls of St. Anthony, the site of Minnesota's Twin Cities, 
and he finally fell in with a band of Duluth's bushrovers from 
Kaministiquia (modern Fort William), Lake Superior. 



The rest of the story of La Salle on the Mississippi is more 
the history of the United States than of Canada, and must be 
given in few words. 

When La Salle returned from interviewing his creditors on 
the St. Lawrence, he found the Illinois Indians dispersed by 
hostile Iroquois whom his enemies had hounded on. Fort Creve- 
coeur had been destroyed and plundered by mutineers among 
his own men. Only Tonty and two or three others had remained 
faithful, and they had fled for their lives to Lake Michigan. Not 
knowing where Tonty had taken refuge, La Salle pushed ondtnvn 
the Illinois River, and for the first time beheld the Mississippi, 
the goal of all his dreams; but anxiety for his lost men robbed the 
event of all jubilation. Once more united with Tonty at Michi- 
limackinac, La Salle returned dauntlessly to the Illinois. Late 
in the fall of 1681 he set out with eighteen Indians and twenty 
Frenchmen from Lake Michigan for the Illinois. February of 
1682 saw the canoes floating down the winter-swollen current 
of the Illinois River for the Mississippi, which was reached on 
the 6th. A week later the river had cleared of ice, and the 
voyageurs were camped amid the dense forests at the mouth of 
the Missouri. The weather became warmer. Trees were don- 
ning their bridal attire of spring and the air was heavy with the 
odor of blossoms. Instead of high cliffs, carved fantastic by 



I40 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the waters, came low-lying swamps, full of reeds, through which 
the canoes glided and lost themselves. Camp after camp of 
strange Indian tribes they visited, till finally they came to 
villages where the Indians were worshipers of the sun and 
wore clothing of Spanish make. By these signs La Salle 
guessed he was nearing the Gulf of Mexico. Fog lay longer on 
the river of mornings now. Ground was lower. They were 
nearing the sea. April 6 the river seemed to split into three 
channels. Different canoes followed each channel. The muddy 
river water became salty. Then the blue sky line opened to the 
fore through the leafy vista of the forest-grown banks. Another 
paddle stroke, and the canoes shot out on the Gulf of Mexico, 
— La Salle erect and silent and stern as was his wont. April 9, 
1682, a cross is planted with claim to this domain for France. 
To fire of musketry and chant of Te Deum a new empire is 
created for King Louis of France. Louisiana is its name. 

Take a map of North America. Look at it. What had the 
pathfinders of New France accomplished } Draw a line from 
Cape Breton to James Bay, from James Bay down the Missis- 
sippi to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Gulf of Mexico across to 
Cape Breton. Inside the triangle lies the French empire of the 
New World, — in area the size of half Europe. That had the 
pathfinders accomplished for France. 

La Salle was too ill to proceed at once from the Mississippi 
to Quebec. As long as Frontenac remained governor. La Salle 
could rely on his hungry creditors and vicious enemies — now 
eager as wolves to confiscate his furs and seize his seigniory at 
Fort Frontenac — being restrained by the strong hand of the 
Viceroy ; but while La Salle lay ill at the Illinois fort, Fron- 
tenac was succeeded by La Barre as viceroy ; and the new 
Governor was a weak, avaricious old man, ready to believe any 
evil tale carried to his ears. He at once sided with La Salle's 
enemies, and wrote the French King that the explorer's "/lead 
7vas turned"; that La Salle ^^ accomplisJicd nothing, but spent 
his life leading bajidits tJirougJi the forests, pillaging Indians ; 



DEATH OF LA SALLE 141 

tJiat all the story of discovering the Mississippi was a fabrica- 
tion.'' When La Salle came from the wilderness he found him- 
self a ruined man. Fort Frontenac had been seized by his 
enemies. Supplies for the Mississippi had been stopped, and 
officers were on their way to seize the forts there. 

Leaving Tonty in charge of his interests, La Salle sailed for 
France where he had a strong friend at court in Frontenac. As 
it happened, Spain and France were playing at the game of 
checkmating each other; and it pleased the French King to 
restore La Salle's forts and to give the Canadian explorer four 
ships to colonize the Mississippi by way of the Gulf of Mexico. 
This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the gulf ; but 
Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in 
sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth ; La 
Salle, only a noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered 
and quarreled from the first. By some blunder, when the ships 
reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden with colonists, in December 
of 1,684, they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and anchored 
off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France. Two others 
were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips 
seeking the Mississippi, resolved to go overland by way of the 
Mississippi valley and the Illinois to obtain aid in Canada for 
his colonists. All the world knows what happened. Near Trinity 
River in Texas some of his men mutinied. Early in the morn- 
ing of the 19th of March, 1687, La Salle Igft camp with a friar 
and Indian to ascertain what was delaying the plotters, who 
had not returned from the hunt. Suddenly La Salle seemed 
overwhelmed by a great sadness. He spoke of death. A moment 
later, catching sight of one of the delinquents, he had called out. 
A shot rang from the underbush ; another shot ; and La Salle 
reeled forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. 
The body of the man who had won a new empire for France was 
stripped and left naked, a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. 
So perished Robert Cavelier de La Salle, aged forty-four. 

Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate 
of mutineers is the same the world over. Having slain their 



142 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

commander, they fell on one another and perished, either at 
one another's hands or among the Indians. As for the colonists 
of men, women, and girls left in Texas, the few who were not 
massacred by the Indians fell into the hands of the Spaniards. 
La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what would now 
be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the world 
calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage. 

With the passing of Robert de La Salle passes the heroic 
age of Canada, — its age of youth's dream. Now was to come 
its manhood, — its struggles, its wars, its nation building, working 
out a greater destiny than any dream of youth. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM 1679 TO 1T1.'> 

Before leaving for France, Jean Talon, the Intendant, had set 
another exploration in motion. English trade was now in full 
sway on Hudson Bay. In possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio, 
the Illinois, the Great Lakes, France controlled all avenues of 
approach to the Great Northwest except Hudson Bay. This 
she had lost through injustice to Radisson ; and already the 
troublesome question had come up, — What was to be the 
boundary between the fur-trading domain of the French north- 
ward from the St. Lawrence and the fur-trading domain of the 
English southward from Hudson Bay. Fewer furs came down 
to Quebec from Labrador, the King's Domain, from Kaminis- 
tiquia (Fort William), the stamping ground of Duluth, the forest 
ranger. The furs of these regions were being drained by the 
English of Hudson Bay. 

Talon determined to put a stop to this, and had advised 
Frontenac accordingly. August, 167 1, Governor Frontenac 
dispatched the English Jesuit — Father Albanel — with French 
guides and Indian voyageurs to set up French arms on Hudson 
Bay and to bear letters to Radisson and Groseillers. The jour- 
ney was terrific. I have told the story elsewhere. Autumn found 
the voyageurs beyond the forested shores of the Saguenay and 
Lake St. John, ascending a current full of boiling cascades 
towards Lake Mistassini. Then the frost-painted woods became 
naked as antlers, with wintry winds setting the dead boughs 
crashing ; and the ice, thin as mica, forming at the edges of 
the streams, had presently thickened too hard for the voyageurs 
to break with their paddles. Albanel and his comrades wintered 
in the Montaignais' lodges, which were banked so heavily with 
snow that scarcely a breath of pure air could penetrate the 

14.1 



144 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

stench. By day the priest wandered from lodge to lodge, 
preaching the gospel. At night he was to be found afar in the 
snow-padded solitudes of the forest engaged in prayer. At last, 
in the spring of 1672, thaw set the ice loose and the torrents 
rushing. Downstream on June 10 launched Albanel, running 
many a wild-rushing rapid, taking the leap with the torrential 
waters over the lesser cataracts, and avoiding the larger falls by 
long detours over rocks slippery as ice, through swamps to a 
man's armpits. The hinterland of Hudson Bay, with its swamps 
and rough portages and dank forests of unbroken windfall, was 
then and is to-day the hardest canoe trip in North America; but 
towards the end of June the French canoes glided out on the 
arm of the sea called James Bay, hoisted the French flag, and in 
solemn council with the Indians presented gifts to induce them 
to come down the Saguenay to Quebec. Fort Rupert, the Hud- 
son's Bay Company's post, consisted of .two barrack-like log 
structures. When Albanel came to the houses he found not a 
soul, only boxes of provisions and one lonely dog. 

A few weeks previously the men of the English company had 
gone on up the west coast of Hudson Bay, prospecting for the 
site of a new settlement. Before Albanel had come at all, there 
was friction among the English. Radisson and Groseillers were 
Catholics and French, and they were supervisors of the entire 
trade. Bayly, the English governor, was subject to them. So 
was Captain Gillam, with whom they had quarreled long ago, 
when he refused to take his boat into Hudson Straits on the 
voyage from Port Royal. Radisson and Groseillers were for 
establishing more posts up the west coast of Hudson Bay, 
farther from the competition of Duluth's forest rovers on Lake 
Superior. They had examined the great River Nelson and 
urged Bayly, the English governor, to build a fort there. Bayly 
sulked and blustered by turns. In this mood they had come 
back to Prince Rupert to find the French flag flying above 
their fort and the English Jesuit, Albanel, snugly ensconced, 
with passports from Governor Frontenac and personal letters 
for Radisson and Groseillers. 



RADISSON QUARRELS WITH COMPANY 



145 



England and France were at peace. Bayly had to respect 
Albanel's passports, but he wished this English envoy of French 
rivals far enough ; and when Captain Gillam came from England 
the old quarrel flamed out in open hostility. Radisson antl 
Groseillers were accused of being in league with the French 
traders. A thousand rumors of what next happened have gained 
currency. One writer says that the English and French came 
to blows ; another, that 
Radisson and Groseillers 
deserted, going back 
overland with Albanel. 
In the Archives of Hud- 
son's Bay House I found 
a letter stating that the 
English captain kid- 
napped the Jesuit Alba- 
nel and carried him a 
captive to England. It 
may as well be frankly 
stated these rumors are 
all sheer fiction. Albanel 
went back overland as 
he came. Radisson and 
Groseillers did not go 
with him, though there 
may have been blows. 
Instead, they went to 
England on Gillam's ship to present their case to the Cfnnpany. 

The Hudson's Bay Company was uneasy. Radisson and 
Groseillers were aliens. True, Radisson had married Mary 
Kirke, the daughter of a shareholder, and was bound to the 
English ; but if Radisson and Groseillers had forsworn one 
land, might they not forswear another, and go back to the 
French, as Frontenac's letters no doubt urged ? The com- 
pany offered Radisson a salary of ;^ioo a year to stay as clerk 
in England. They did not want him out on the bay again ; but 




PRINCE RUPERT 

(After the painting by Sir P. Lely) 



146 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

France had offered Radisson a commission in the French navy. 
Without more ado the two Frenchmen left London for Paris, 
and Paris for America. 

The year 1676 finds Radisson back in Quebec engaged in 
the beaver trade with all those friends of his youth whose 
names have become famous, — La Salle of Fort Frontenac, and 
Charles Le Moyne the interpreter of Montreal, and Jolliet of 
the Mississippi, and La Forest who befriended La Salle, Le 
Chesnaye who opposed him, and.Duluth whose forest rangers 
roved from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. It can be guessed 
what these men talked about over the table of the Sovereign 
Council at Quebec, whither they had been called to discuss the 
price of beaver and the use of brandy. 

The fur traders were at that time in two distinct rings, — the 
ring of La Salle and La Forest, supported by Frontenac ; the 
Montreal ring, headed by Le Chesnaye, who fought against 
the opening of the west because Lake Ontario trade would 
divert his trade from the Ottawa. Radisson' s report of that 
west coast of Hudson Bay, in area large as all New France, 
interested both factions of the fur trade intensely. He was 
offered two ships for Hudson Bay by the men of both rings. 
Because England and France were at peace, Frontenac dared 
not recognize the expedition officially ; but he winked at it, 
— as he winked at many irregularities in the fur trade, — 
granted the Company of the North license to trade on Hudson 
Bay, and gave Radisson's party passports " to fish off Gaspe." 
In the venture Radisson, Groseillers, and the son Chouart Groseil- 
lers, invested their all, possibly amounting to $2500 each. The 
rest of the money for the expedition came from the Godfroys, 
titled seigneurs of Three Rivers ; Dame Sorel, widow of an 
officer in the Carignan Regiment ; Le Chesnaye, La Salle's 
lieutenant, and others. 

The boats were rickety little tubs unfit for rough northern seas, 
and the crews sulky, underfed men, who threatened mutiny at 
every watering place and only refrained from cutting Radisson's 



UP LABRADOR COAST 



147 



throat because he kept them busy. July 11, 1682, the explorers 
sheered away from the fishing fleet of the St. Lawrence and 
began coasting up the lonely iron shore of Labrador. Ice was 
met sweeping south in mountainous bergs. Over Isle Demons 



VL^ 




MAP OF HUDSON BAY 

in the Straits of Belle Isle hung storm wrack and brown fog as 
in the days when Marguerite Roberval pined there. Then the 
ships were cutting the tides of Labrador ; here through fog ; there 
skimming a coast that was sheer masonry to the very sky ; again, 
scudding from storm to refuge of some hole in the wall. 



148 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Before September the ships rode triumphantly into Five- 
Fathom-Hole off Nelson River, Hudson Bay. Here two great 
rivers, wide as the St. Lawrence, rolled to the sea, separated 
by a long tongue of sandy dunes. The north river was the 
Nelson ; the south, the Hayes. Approach to both was danger- 
ous, shallow, sandy, and bowlder strewn ; but Radisson's vessels 
were light draught, and he ran them in on the tide to Hayes 
River on the south, where his men took possession for France 
and erected log huts as a fort. 

Groseillers remained at the fort to command the twenty-seven 
men. Young Chouart ranged the swamps and woods for Indians, 
and Radisson had paddled down the Hayes from meeting some 
Assiniboine hunters, when, to his amazement, there rolled across 
the wooded swamps the most astonishing report that could be 
heard in desolate solitudes. It was the rolling reverberation, the 
dull echo of a far-away cannon firing signal after signal. 

Like a flash Radisson guessed the game. After all, the Hud- 
son's Bay Company had taken his advice and were sending ships 
to trade on the west coast. The most of men, supported by only 
twenty-seven- mutineers, would have scuttled ships and escaped 
overland, but the explorers of New France, Champlain and Jolliet 
and La Salle, were not made of the stuff that runs from trouble. 

Picking out three men, Radisson crossed the marsh northward 
to reconnoiter on Nelson River. Through the brush he espied 
a white tent on what is now known as Gillam's Island, a fortress 
half built, and a ship at anchor. All night he and his spies 
watched, but none of the builders came near enough to be 
seized, and next day at noon Radisson put a bold face on and 
paddled within cannon shot of the island. 

Here was a pretty to-do, indeed ! The Frenchman must have 
laughed till he shook with glee ! It was not the Hudson's Bay 
Company ship at all, but a poachei', a pirate, an interloper, for- 
bidden by the laws of the English Company's monopoly ; and 
who was the poacher but Ben Gillam, of Boston, son of Cap- 
tain Gillam of the Hudson's Bay Company, with whom, no doubt, 
he was in collusion to defraud the English traders ! Calling for 



RADISSON CAPTURES HIS RIVALS 149 

Englishmen to come clown to the shore as hostages for fair 
treatment, Radisson went boldly aboard the young man's ship, 
saw everything, counted the men, noted the fact that Gillam's 
crew were mutinous, and half frightened the life out of the 
young Boston captain by telling him of the magnificent fort the 
French had on the south river, of the frigates and cannon and 
the powder magazines. As a friend he advised young Gillam 
not to permit his men to approach the French ; otherwise they 
might be attacked by the Quebec soldiers. Then the crafty 
Radisson paddled off, smiling to himself ; but not so fast, not 
so easy ! As he drifted down Nelson River, what should he run 
into full tilt but the Hudson's Bay Company ship itself, brist- 
ling with cannon, manned by his old enemy, Captain Gillam ! 

If the two English parties came together, Radisson was lost. 
He must beat them singly before they met ; and again putting 
on a bold face, he marched out, met his former associates, and 
as a friend advised them not to ascend the river farther. Fortu- 
nately for Radisson, both Gillam and Bridgar, the Hudson's 
Bay governor, were drinking heavily and glad to take his advice. 
The winter passed, with Radisson perpetrating such tricks on 
his rivals as a player might with the dummy men on a chess- 
board ; but the chessboard, with the English rivals for pawns, 
was suddenly upset by the unexpected. Young Gillam discov- 
ered that Radisson had no fort at all, — only log cabins with a 
handful of ragamuffin bushrovers ; and Captain Gillam senior 
got word of young Gillam's presence. Radisson had to act, act 
quickly, and on the nail. 

Leaving half a dozen men as hostages in young Gillam's fort, 
Radisson invited the youth to visit the French fort for which the 
young Boston fellow had expressed such skeptical scorn. To 
make a long story short, young Gillam was no sooner out of his 
own fort than the French hostages took peaceable possession of 
it, and Gillam was no sooner in Radisson's fort than the French 
clapped him a prisoner in their guardroom. Ignorant that the 
French had captured young Gillam's fort, the Hudson's Bay 
Company men had marched upstream at dead of night to his 



150 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

rescue. The English knocked for admittance. The French 
guards threw open the gates. In marched the English traders. 
The French clapped the gates to. The English were now them- 
selves prisoners. Such a double victory would have been im- 
possible to the French if the Hudson's Bay Company men had 
not fuddled themselves with drink and allowed their fine ship, 
the Prince Rupert, to be wrecked in the ice drive. 

In spring the ice jam wrecked Radisson's vessels, too, so 
he was compelled to send the most of his prisoners in a sloop 
down Hudson Bay to Prince Rupert, while he carried the rest 
with him on young Gillam's ship down to Quebec with an enor- 
mous cargo of furs. 

By all the laws of navigation Ben Gillani was nothing more 
or less than pirate. The monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany forbade him trading on Hudson Bay. The license of the 
Company of the North at Quebec also excluded him. In later 
years, indeed, young Gillam turned pirate outright, was captured 
in connection with Captain Kidd at Boston, and is supposed to 
have been e.xecuted with the famous pirate. But when Radis- 
son left Nelson in charge of young Chouart and came down to 
Quebec with young Gillam's ship as prize, a change had taken 
place at Quebec. Governor Frontenac had been recalled. In 
his place was La Barre, whose favor could be bought by any 
man who would pay the bribe, and who had already ruined La 
Salle by permitting creditors to seize Fort Frontenac. England 
and France were at peace. Therefore La Barre gave Gillam's 
vessel back to him. The revenue collectors were permitted to 
seize all the furs which La Chesnaye had not already shipped 
to France. Though La Barre was reprimanded by the King for 
both acts, not a sou did Radisson and Groseillers and Chouart 
ever receive for their investment ; and Radisson was ordered to 
report at once to the King in France. 

The next part of Radisson's career has always been the great 
blot upon his memory, a blot that seemed incomprehensible ex- 
cept on the ground that his English wife had induced him to 



RADISSON ORDERED BACK TO ENGLAND 



151 



return to the Hudson's Bay Company; but in the memorials 
left by Radisson himself, in Hudson's Bay House, London, I 
found the true explanation of his conduct. 

France and England were, as yet, at peace ; but it was a pact 
of treacherous kind, — secret treaty by which the King of Eng- 
land drew pay from the King of France. The King of France 
dared not offend England by giving public approval to Radisson's 
capture of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory ; therefore 
he ordered Radisson to go back to Hudson's Bay Company serv- 
ice and restore what he had captured. But the King of France 
had no notion of relinquishing" claim to the vast territory of 
Hudson Bay ; therefore he commanded Radisson to go unoffi- 
cially. Groseillers, the brother, seems to have dropped from all 
engagements from this time, and to have returned to Three 
Rivers. A copy of the French minister's instructions is to be 
found in the Radisson records of the Hudson's Bay Company 
to-day. Not a sou of compensation was Radisson to receive for 
the money that he and his friends had invested in the venture 
of 1682-1683. Not a i^nny of reparation was he to obtain for 
the furs at Nelson, which he was to turn over to the Hudson's 
Bay Company. 

In France, preparation went forward as if for a second voyage 
to Nelson ; but Radisson secretly left Paris for London, where 
he was welcomed by the courtiers of England in May, 1684, 
and given presents by King Charles and the Duke of York, who 
were shareholders in the Hudson's Bay Company. May 17 he 
sailed with the Hudson's Bay Company vessels for Port Nelson, 
and there took over from young Chouart the French forts with 
^20,000 worth of furs for the English company. 

Young Chouart Groseillers and his five comrades were furi- 
ous. They had borne the brunt of attack from both English 
and Indian enemies during Radisson's absence, and they were 
to receive not a penny for the furs collected. And their fury 
knew no bounds when they were forcibly carried back to Eng- 
land. The English had invited them on board one of the vessels 
for last instructions. Quickly the anchor was slipped, sails run 



152 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



out, and the kidnapped Frenchmen carried from the bay. In a 
second, young Chouart's hand was on his sword, and he would 
have fought on the spot, but Radisson begged him to conceal 
his anger; "for," urged Radisson, "some of these English ruffians 
would like nothing better than to stab you in a scuffle." 

In London, Radisson was lionized, publicly thanked by the 
company, presented to the court, and given a present of silver 
plate. As for the young French captives, they were treated 
royally, voted salaries of ;^ioo a year, and all their expenses of 
lodgings paid ; but when they spoke of returning to France, un- 
expected obstructions were created. Their money was held back; 
they were dogged by spies. Finally they took the oath of alle- 
giance to England, and accepted engagements to go back as 
servants of the Hudson's Bay Company to Nelson at salaries 
ranging from ;^ioo to ;^40, good pay as money was estimated 
in those days, equal to at least five times as much money of the 
present day. It was even urged on young Chouart that he should 
take an English wife, as Radisson had ; but the young French- 
men smiled c^uietly to themselves. Secfet offers of a title had 
been conveyed to Chouart by the French ambassador ; and to 
his mother in Three Rivers he wrote : 

I could not go to Paris; I was not at liberty; but I shall be at the ren- 
dezvous or perish trying. I cannot say more in a letter. I would have left 
this kingdom, but they hold back my pay, and orders have been given to 
arrest me if I try to leave. Assure Mr. Duluth of my humble services. I 
shall see him as soon as I can. Pray tell my good friend, Jan Pere. 

Pere, it will be remembered, was a bushranger of Duluth's 
band, who had been with Jolliet on Lake Superior. 

As for Radisson, the English kept faith with him as long as 
the Stuarts and his personal friends ruled the English court. 
He spent the summers on Hudson Bay as superintendent of 
trade, the winters in England supervising cargoes and sales. 
His home was on Seething Lane near the great Tower, where 
one of his friends was commander. Near him dwelt the mer- 
chant princes of London like the Kirkes and the Robinsons and 
the Youngs. His next-door neighbor was the man of fashion, 



DEATH OF RADISSON 153 

Samuel Pepys, in whose hands Radisson's Journals of his voyages 
finally fell. His income at this time was j^ioo in dividends, ;^iOO 
in salary, equal to about five times that amount in modern money. 
Then came a change in Radisson's fortunes. The Stuarts 
were dethroned and their friends dispersed. The shareholders 
of the fur company bore names of men who knew naught of 
Radisson's services. War destroyed the fur company's divi- 
dends. Radisson's income fell off to ;^50 a year. His family 
had increased ; so had his debts ; and he had long since been 
compelled to move from fashionable quarters. A petition filed 
in a lawsuit avers that he was in great mental anxiety lest his 
children should come to want ; but he won his lawsuits against 
the company for arrears of salary. Peace brought about a re- 
sumption of dividends, and the old pathfinder seems to have 
passed his last years in comparative comfort. Some time be- 
tween March and July, 17 10, Radisson set out on the Last Long 
Voyage of all men, dying near London. His burial place is un- 
known. As far as Canada is concerned, Radisson stands fore- 
most as pathfinder of the Great Northwest. 

But to return to "good friend, Jan Fere," whom the French- 
men, forced into English service, were to meet somewhere on 
Hudson Bay. It is like a story from borderland forays. 

Seven large ships set sail from England for Hudson Bay in 
1685, carrying Radisson and young Chouart and the five unwill- 
ing Frenchmen. The company's forts on the bay now numbered 
four : Nelson, highest up on the west ; Albany, southward on 
an island at the mouth of Albany River; Moose, just where 
James Bay turns westward ; and Rupert at the southeast corner. 
But French ships under La Martiniere of the Sovereign Coun- 
cil had also set sail from Quebec in 1685, commissioned by the 
indignant fur traders to take Radisson dead or alive ; for Quebec 
did not know the secret orders of the French court, which had 
occasioned Radisson's last defection. 

July saw the seven Hudson's Bay ships worming their way 
laboriously through the ice floes of the straits. Small sails only 



154 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OP^ THE NORTH 

were used. With grappling hool^s thrown out on the ice pans 
and crews toihng to their armpits in ice skish, the boats pulled 
themselves forward, resting on the lee side of some ice floe 
during ebb tide, all hands out to fight the roaring ice pans 
when the tide began to come in. At length on the night of 
July 27, with crews exhausted and the timbers badly rammed, 
the ships steered to rest in a harbor off Digge's Island, sheltered 
from the ice drive. The nights of that northern sea are light 
almost as day ; but clouds had shrouded the sky and a white 
mist was rising from the water when there glided like ghosts 
from gloom two strange vessels. Before the exhausted crews 
of the English ships were well awake, the waters were churned 
to foam by a roar of cannonading. The strange ships had 
bumped keels with the little Mcir/iaiif Pcrpctnana of the Hud- 
son's Bay. Radisson, on whose head lay a price, was first to 
realize that they were attacked by French raiders; and his ship 
was out with sails and off like a bird, followed by the other 
English vessels, all except the little Pcrpctnana, now in death 
grapple between her foes. Captain Hume, Mates Smithsend 
and (jrimmington fought like demons to keep the French from 
boarding her ; but they were knocked down, fettered and clapped 
below hatches while the victors plundered the cargo. Fourteen 
men were put to the sword. August witnessed ship, cargo, and 
captives brought into Quebec amid noisy acclaim and roar of 
cannon. The French had not captured Radisson nor ransomed 
Chouart, but there was booty to the raiders. New France had 
proved her right to trade on Hudson Bay spite of peace between 
France and England, or secret commands to Radisson. Thrown 
in a dungeon below Chateau St. Louis, Quebec, the English 
captives hear wild rumors of another raid on the bay, overland 
in winter; and Smithsend, by secret messenger, sends warning 
to England, and for his pains is sold with his fellow-captives 
into slavery in Martinique, whence he escapes to England before 
the summer of 1686. 

But what is Jan Pere of Uuluth's bushrovers doing } All un- 
conscious of the raid on the ships, the governors of the four 



JAN PERfi THE SPY 



155 



English forts awaited the coming of the annual supplies. At 
Albany was a sort of harbor beacon as well as lookout, built 
high on scaffolding above a hill. One morning, in August of 
1685, the sentry on the lookout was amazed to see three men, 
iv/iitc men, in a canoe, steering swiftly down the rain-swollen 
river from the Up-Country. Such a thing was impossible. 
" White men from the interior ! Whence did they come 1 " 
Governor Sargeant came striding to the fort gate, ordering his 




CONTEMPORARY FRENCH MAP OF HUDSON BAY AND VICINITY 



cannon manned. Behold nothing more dangerous than three 
French forest rangers dressed in buckskins, but with manners a 
trifle too smooth for such rough garb, as one doffs his cap to 
Governor Sargeant and introduces himself as Jan Pere, a woods- 
man out hunting. 

England and France were at peace ; so Governor Sargeant 
invited the three mysterious gentlemen inside to a breakfast of 
sparkling wines and good game, hoping no doubt that the wines 
would unlock the gay fellows' tongues to tell what game t/ii-j 
were playing. As the wine passed freely, there were stories of 



156 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the hunt and the voyage and the annual ships. When might 
the ships be coming? "Humph," mutters Sargeant through 
his beard ; and he doesn't urge these knights of the wild woods 
to tarry longer. Their canoe glides gayly down coast to the 
salt marshes, where the shooting is good ; but by chance that 
night, purely by cJiance, the French leave their canoe so that 
the tide will carry it away. Then they come back crestfallen to 
the English fort. 

Meanwhile a ship has arrived with the story of the raid on 
the Perpctiiana. Sargeant is so enraged that he sends two of the 
French spies across to Charlton Island, where they can hunt or 
die ; Monsieur Jan Pere he casts into the cellar of Albany with 
irons on his wrists and balls on his feet. When the ships sail 
for England, Pere is sent back as prisoner without having had 
one word with Chouart Groseillers. As for the two Frenchmen 
placed on Charlton Island, did Sargeant think they were bush- 
rovers and would stay on an island.'' By October they have 
laid up store of moose meat, built themselves a canoe, paddled 
across to the mainland, and are speeding like wildfire overland 
to Michilimackinac with word that Jan Pere is held prisoner at 
Albany. As Jan Pere drops out of history here, it may be said 
that he was kept prisoner in England as guarantee for the 
safety of the English crew held prisoners at Quebec. When he 
escaped to France he was given money and a minor title for 
his services. 

The news that Pere lay in a dungeon on Hudson Bay supplied 
the very excuse that the Quebec fur traders needed for an over- 
land raid in time of peace. These were the wild rumors of which 
the captive English crew sent warning to England ; but the north- 
ern straits would not be open to the company ships before June 
of 1686, and already a hundred wild French bushrovers were 
rallying to ascend the Ottawa to raid the English on Hudson Bay. 

And now a change comes in Canadian annals. For half a 
century its story is a record of lawless raids, bloody foray, 
dare-devil courage combined with the most fiendish cruelty and 
sublime heroism. Only a few of these raids can be narrated here. 



THE RAID ON MOOSE FACTORY 157 

June 18, 1686, when the long twihght of the northern night 
merged with dawn, there came out from the thicket of under- 
brush round Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, one hundred bush- 
rovers, led by Chevalier de Troyes of Niagara, accompanied by 
Le Chesnaye of the fur trade, Quebec, and the Jesuit, Sylvie. 
Of the raiders, sixty-six were Indians under Pierre Le Moyne 
d' Iberville and his brothers, Maricourt and Ste. Helene, aged 




LE MOYNE d'iBERVILLE 

about twenty-four, sons of Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal 
interpreter. Moose Factory at this time boasted fourteen cannon, 
log-slab palisades, commodious warehouses, and four stone bas- 
tions, — one with three thousand pounds of powder, another 
used as barracks for twelve soldiers, another housing beaver 
pelts, and a fourth serving as kitchen. Iberville and his brothers, 
scouting round on different sides of the fort, soon learned that 
not a sentinel was on duty. The great gate opposite the river, 
studded with brass nails, was securely bolted, but not a cannon 



N 



158 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

had been loaded. The bushrangers then cast aside all clothing 
that would hamper, and, pistol in hand, advanced silent and 
stealthy as wild-cats. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasin 
tread. The water lay like glass, and the fort slept silent as death. 
Hastily each raider had knelt for the blessing of the priest. 
Pistols had been recharged. Iberville bade his wild Indians not 
to forget that the Sovereign Council of Quebec offered ten 
crowns reward for every enemy slain, twenty for every enemy 
captured. In fact, there could be no turning back. Two thou- 
sand miles of juniper swamps and forests lay between the bush- 
rovers and home. They must conquer or perish. De Troyes led 
his white soldiers round to make a pretense of attack from the 
water front. Iberville posted his sixty-six Indians along the walls 
with muskets rammed through the loopholes. Then, with an 
unearthly yell, the Le Moyne brothers were over the tops of 
the pickets, swords in hand, before the English soldiers had 
awakened. The English gunner reeled from his cannon at the 
main gate with head split to the collar bone. The gates were 
thrown wide, trees rammed the doors open, and Iberville had 
dashed halfway up the stairs of the main house before the in- 
mates, rushing out in their nightshirts, realized what had hap- 
pened. Two men only were killed, one on each side. The French 
were masters of Moose Fort in less than five minutes, with six- 
teen captives and rich supply of ammunition. 

Eastward of Moose was Rupert Fort, where the company's 
ship anchored. Hither the raiders plied their canoes by sea. 
Look at the map ! Across the bottom of James Bay projects a 
long tongue of swamp land. To save time, Iberville portaged 
across this, and by July i was opposite Prince Rupert's bas- 
tions. At the dock lay the English ship. That day Iberville's 
men kept in hiding, but at night he had ambushed his men 
along shore and paddled across to the ship. Just as Iberville 
stepped on the deck a man on guard sprang at his throat. One 
blow of Iberville's sword killed the Englishman on the spot. 
Stamping to call the crew aloft, Iberville sabered the men as 
they scrambled up the hatches, till the Governor himself threw 



SARGEANT BESIEGED 



159 



up hands in unconditional surrender. The din had alarmed 
the fort, and hot shot snapping fire from the loopholes kept 
the raiders off till the Le Moyne brothers succeeded in scram- 
bling to the roofs of the bastions, hacking holes through the 
rough thatch and firing inside. This drove the English gunners 
from their cannon, A moment later, and the raiders were on 
the walls. It was a repetition of the fight at Moose Factory. 
The English, taken by surprise, surrendered at once ; and the 
French now had thirty prisoners, a good ship, two forts, but no 
provisions. 

Northwestward three hundred miles lay Albany Fort. Iber- 
ville led off in canoes with his bushrovers. De Troyes followed 
on the English boat with French soldiers and English prisoners. 
To save time, as the bay seemed shallow, Iberville struck out 
from the shore across seas. All at once a north wind began 
whipping the waters, sweeping down a maelstrom of churning 
ice. Worse still, fog fell thick as wool. Any one who knows 
canoe travel knows the danger. Iberville avoided swamping by 
ordering his men to camp for the night on the shifting ice pans, 
canoes held above heads where the ice crush was wildest, the 
voyageurs clinging hand to hand, making a life line if one chanced 
to slither through the ice slush. When daylight came with worse 
fog, Iberville kept his pistol firing to guide his followers, and so 
pushed on. Four days the dangerous traverse lasted, but August 
I the bushrovers were in camp below the cliffs of Albany. 

Indians had forewarned Governor Sargeant. The loopholes 
of his palisades bristled with muskets and heavy guns that set 
the bullets flying soon as De Troyes arrived and tried to land 
the cannon captured from the other forts for assault on Albany. 
Drums beating, flags flying, soldiers in line, a French messenger 
goes halfway forward and demands of an English messenger 
come halfway out the surrender of Sieur Jan Pere, languishing 
in the dungeons of Albany. The English Governor sends curt 
word back that Pere has been sent home to France long ago, 
and demands what in thunder the French mean by these raids 
in time of peace. The French retire that night to consider. 



i6o CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Cannon they have, but they have used up nearly all their 
ammunition. They have thirty prisoners, but they have no 
provisions. The prisoners have told them there are ^50,000 
worth of furs stored at Albany. 

Inside the fort the English were in almost as bad way. The 
larder was lean, powder was scarce, and the men were wildly 
mutinous, threatening to desert en masse for the French on the 
excuse they had not hired to fight, and " if any of us lost a leg, 
the company could not make it good.'' 

At the end of two days' desultory firing, the company Gov- 
ernor captured down at Rupert came to Sargeant and told him 
frankly that the bloodthirsty bushrovers were desperate ; they 
had either to conc^uer or starve, and if they were compelled to 
fight, there would be no quarter. Men and women alike would 
be butchered in hand-to-hand fight. Still Sargeant hung on, 
hoping for the annual frigate of the company. Then powder 
failed utterly. Still Sargeant would not show the white flag ; 
so an underfactor flourished a white sheet from an upper win- 
dow. Chevalier De Troyes came forward and seated himself 
on one of the cannon. Governor Sargeant went out and seated 
himself on the same cannon with two bottles of wine. The Eng- 
lish of Albany were allowed to withdraw to Charlton Island to 
await the company ship. As for the other prisoners, those who 
were not compelled to carry the plundered furs back to Quebec, 
were turned adrift in the woods to find their way overland 
north to Nelson. Iberville's bushrovers were back in Montreal 
by October. 



CHAPTER IX 

FROM 1686 TO 1698 

For ten years Hudson Bay becomes the theater of northern 
buccaneers and bushraiders. A treaty of neutrahty in 1686 
provides that the bay shall be held in common by the fur traders 
of England and France ; but the adventurers of England and 
the bushrovers .of Quebec have no notion of leaving things so 
uncertain. Spite of truce, both fit out raiders, and the King 
of France, according to the shifting diplomacy of the day, issues 
secret orders " to permit not a vestige of English possession on 
the northern bay." 

Maricourt Le Moyne held the newly captured forts on the 
south shore of James Bay till Iberville came back overland in 
1687. The fort at Rupert had been completely abandoned after 
the French victory of the previous summer, and the Hudson's 
Bay Company sloop, the Young, had just sailed into the port to 
reestablish the fur post. Iberville surrounded the sloop by his 
bushrovers, captured it with all hands, and dispatched four spies 
across to Charlton Island, where another sloop, the C/iurc/iill, 
swung at anchor. Here Iberville's run of luck turned. Three of 
his four spies were captured, fettered, and thrown into the hold 
of the vessel for the winter. In the spring of 1 688 one was brought 
above decks to help the English sailors. Watching his chance, 
the grizzled bushrover waited till six of the English crew were 
up the ratlines. Quick as flash the Frenchman tiptoed across 
decks in his noiseless moccasins, took one precautionary glance 
over his shoulder, brained two Englishmen with an ax, liberated 
his comrades, and at pistol point kept the other Englishmen up 
the masts till he and his fellows had righted the ship and steered 
the vessel across to Rupert River, where the provisions were just 
in time to save Iberville's party from starvation. 

161 



l62 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

This episode is typical of what went on at the Hudson's Bay 
forts for ten years. Each year, when the Enghsh ships came 
out to Nelson on the west coast, armed bands were sent south 
to wrest the forts on James Bay from the French ; and each 
spring, when Iberville's bushrovers came gliding down the 
rivers in their canoes from Canada, there was a fight to drive 
out the English. Then the Indians would scatter to their hunt- 
ing grounds. No more loot of furs for a year ! The English 
would sail away in their ships, the French glide away in their 
canoes ; and for a winter the uneasy quiet of calm between 
two thunderclaps would rest over the waters of Hudson Bay. 

In the spring of 1688, about the time that the brave bush- 
rovers had brought the English ship from Charlton Island across 
to Rupert River, two English frigates under Captain Moon, 
with twenty-four soldiers over and above the crews, had come 
south from Nelson to attack the French fur traders at Albany. 
As ill luck would have it, the ice floes began driving inshore. 
The English ships found themselves locked in the ice before 
the besieged fort. Across the jam from Rupert River dashed 
Iberville with his Indian bandits, portaging where the ice floes 
covered the water, paddling where lanes of clear Avay parted the 
floating drift. Iberville hid his men in the tamarack swamps till 
eighty-two Englishmen had landed and all unsuspecting left their 
ships unguarded. Iberville only waited till the furs in the fort had 
been transferred to the holds of the vessels. The ice cleared. 
The Frenchman rushed his bushrovers on board, seized the ves- 
sel with the most valuable cargo, and sailed gayly out of Albany 
for Quebec. The astounded English set fire to the other ship 
and retreated overland. 

But the dare-devil bushrovers were not yet clear of trouble. 
As the ice drive jammed and held them in Hudson Straits, they 
were aghast to see, sailing full tilt with the roaring tide of the 
straits, a fleet of English frigates, the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany's annual ships ; but Iberville sniffed at danger as a war 
horse glories in gunpowder. He laughed his merriest, and as 
the ice drive locked all the ships within gunshot, ran up an 



WAR WITH THE IROQUOIS i6 



J 



English flag above his French crew and had actually signaled 
the captains of the English frigates to come aboard and visit 
him, when the ice cleared. Hoisting sail, he showed swift heels 
to the foe. Iberville's ambition now was to sweep all the Eng- 
lish from Hudson Bay, in other words, to capture Nelson 
on the west coast, whence came the finest furs ; but other raids 
called him to Canada. 

It will be recalled that La Salle's enemies had secretly en- 
couraged the Iroquois to attack the tribes of the Illinois ; and 
now the fur traders of New York were encouraging the Iroquois 
to pillage the Indians of the Mississippi valley, in order to divert 
peltries from the French on the St. Lawrence to the English at 
New York. Savages of the north, rallied by Perrot and Duluth 
and La Motte Cadillac, came down by the lakes to Fort Frontenac 
to aid the French ; but they found that La Barre, the new 
governor, foolish old man, had been frightened into making 
peace with the Iroquois warriors, abandoning the Illinois to 
Iroquois raid and utterly forgetful that a peace ivJiicJi is not a 
victory is not zvot'th the paper it is ivritten on. 

For the shame of this disgraceful peace La Barre was recalled 
to France and the Marquis de Denonville, a brave soldier, sent 
out as governor. Unfortunately Denonville did not understand 
conditions in the colony. The Jesuit missionaries were com- 
missioned to summon the Iroquois to a conference at Fort 
Frontenac, but when the deputies arrived they were seized, 
tortured, and fifty of them shipped to France by the King's 
order to serve as slaves on the royal galleys. It was an act of 
treachery heinous beyond measure and exposed the Jesuit mis- 
sionaries among the Five Nations to terrible vengeance ; but 
the Iroquois code of honor was higher than the white man's. 
"Go home," they warned the Jesuit missionary. "We have 
now every right to treat thee as our foe ; but we shall not do 
so ! Thy heart has had no share in the wrong done to us. We 
shall not punish thee for the crimes of another, tho' thou didst 
act as the unconscious tool. But leave us ! When our young 



1 64 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

men chant the song of war they may take counsel only of their 
fury and harm thee ! Go to thine own people "; and furnishing 
him with guides, they sent him to Quebec. 

Though Denonville marched with his soldiers through the 
Iroquois cantons, he did little harm and less good ; for the wily 
warriors had simply withdrawn their families into the woods, and 
the Iroquois were only biding their time for fearful vengeance. 

This lust of vengeance was now terribly whetted. Dongan, 
the English governor of New York, had been ordered by King 







Sv,.' ^J 






v^-S- N""i':;-\v 



■•- ii' 









FORT FRONTENAC AND THE ADJACENT COUNTRY 

James of England to observe the treaty of neutrality between 
England and France ; but this did not hinder him supplying the 
Iroquois with arms to raid the French and secretly advising 
them "not to bury the war hatchet, — just to hide it in the 
grass, and stand on their guard to begin the war anew." 

Nor did the treaty of neutrality prevent the French from 
raiding Hudson Bay and ordering shot in cold blood any French 
bushrover who dared to guide the English traders to the country 
of the Upper Lakes. 

In addition to English influence egging on the Iroquois, the 
treachery of the Huron chief. The Rat, lashed the vengeance 



THE YEAR OF THE MASSACRE 165 

of the Five Nations to a fury. He had come clown to Fort 
Frontenac to aid the French. He was told that the French had 
again arranged peace with the Iroquois, and deputies were even 
now on their way from the Five Nations. 

" Peace ! " The old Huron chief was dumbfounded. What 
were these fool French doing, trusting to an Iroquois peace } 
"Ah," he grunted, "that may be well"; and he withdrew 
without revealing a sign of his intentions. Then he lay in 
ambush on the trail of the deputies, fell on the Iroquois peace 
messengers with fury, slaughtered half the band, then sent 
the others back with word that he had done this by order of 
Denonville, the French governor. 

" There," grunted The Rat grimly, " I 've killed the peace 
for them ! We '11 see how Onontio gets out of this mess." 

Meanwhile war had been declared between England and 
France. The Stuarts had been dethroned. France was support- 
ing the exiled monarch, and William of Orange had become 
king of England. Iberville and Duluth and La Motte Cadillac, 
the famous fighters of Canada's wild wood, were laying plans 
before the French Governor for the invasion and conquest of 
New York ; and New York was preparing to defend itself by 
pouring ammunition and firearms free of cost into the hands of 
the Iroquois. Then the Iroquois vengeance fell. 

Between the night and morning of August 4 and 5, in 1689, 
a terrific thunderstorm had broken over Montreal. Amidst the 
crack of hail and crash of falling trees, with the thunder rever- 
berating from the mountain like cannonading, whilst the fright- 
ened people stood gazing at the play of lightning across their 
windows, fourteen hundred Iroquois warriors landed behind Mon- 
treal, beached their canoes, and stole upon the settlement. What 
next followed beggars description. Nothing else like it occurs 
in the history of Canada. For years this summer was to be 
known as " the Year of the Massacre." 

Before the storm subsided, the Iroquois had stationed them- 
selves in circles round every house outside the walls of Montreal. 
At the signal of a whistle, the warriors fell on the settlement 



1 66 



CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



like beasts of prey. Neither doors nor windows were fastened 
in that age, and the people, deep in sleep after the vigil of the 
storm, were dragged from their beds before they were well 
awake. Men, women, and children fell victims to such ingenu- 
ity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could conceive. Children 




WILLIAM OF ORANGE 



were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes ; aged parents 
tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters ; fathers held 
powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives 
and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm and were 
on guard were set on fire, and those who perished in the flames 



FRONTENAC RETURNS 1 67 

died a merciful death compared to those who fell in the hands 
of the victors. By daybreak two hundred people had been 
wantonly butchered. A hundred and fifty more had been taken 
captives. As if their vengeance could not be glutted, the Iro- 
quois crossed the river opposite Montreal, and, in full sight of 
the fort, weakly garrisoned and paralyzed with fright, spent the 
rest of the week, day and night, torturing the white captives. 
By night victims could be seen tied to the torture stake amid 
the wreathing flames, with the tormentors dancing round the 
camp fire in maniacal ferocity. Denonville was simply power- 
less. He lost his head, and seemed so panic-stricken that he 
forbade even volunteer bands from rallying to the rescue. For 
two months the Iroquois overran Canada unchecked. Indeed, 
it was years before the boldness engendered by this foray be- 
came reduced to respect for French authority. Settlement after 
settlement, the marauders raided. From Montreal to Three 
Rivers crops went up in flame, and the terrified habitants came 
cowering with their families to the shelter of the palisades. 

In the midst of this universal terror came the country's 
savior. Frontenac had been recalled because he quarreled with 
the intendant and he quarreled with the Jesuits and he quar- 
reled with the fur traders ; but his bitterest enemies did not 
deny that he could put the fear of the Lord and respect for the 
French into the Iroquois' heart. Arbitrary he was as a czar, 
but just always ! To be sure he mended his fortunes by per- 
sonal fur trade, but in doing so he cheated no man ; and he 
worked no injustice, and he wrought in all things for the last- 
ing good of the country. Homage he demanded as to a king, 
once going so far as to drive the Sovereign Councilors from his 
presence with the flat of a sword ; but he firmly believed and 
he had publicly proved that he was worthy of homage, and that 
the men who are forever shouting "liberty — liberty and the 
people's rights," are frequently wolves in sheep's clothing, eat- 
ing out the vitals of & nation's prosperity. 

Here, then, was the haughty, hot-headed, aggressive Frontenac, 
sent back in his old age to restore the prestige of New France, 



1 68 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

where both La Barre the grafter, and Denonville the courteous 
Christian gentleman, had failed. 

To this period of Iroquois raids belongs one of the most 
heroic episodes in Canadian life. The only settlers who had 
not fled to the protection of the palisaded forts were the grand 
old seigniors, the new nobility of New France, whose mansions 
were like forts in themselves, palisaded, with stone bastions and 
water supply and yards for stock and mills inside the walls. 
Here the seigniors, wildwood knights of a wilderness age, held 
little courts that were imitations of the Governor's pomp at Que. 
bee. Sometimes during war the seignior's wife and daughters 
were reduced to plowing in the fields and laboring with the 
women servants at the harvest ; but ordinarily the life at the 
seigniory was a life of petty grandeur, with such style as the back- 
woods afforded. In the hall or great room of the manor house 
was usually an enormous table used both as court of justice by 
the seignior and festive board. On one side was a huge fire- 
place with its homemade benches, on the other a clumsily carved 
chiffonier loaded with solid silver. In the early days the seign- 
ior's bedstead might be in the same room, — an enormous 
affair with panoplies of curtains and counterpanes of fur rugs 
and feather mattresses, so high that it almost necessitated a 
ladder. But in the matter of dress the rude life made up in 
style what it lacked in the equipments of a grand mansion. 

The bishop's description of the women's dresses I have al- 
ready given, though at this period the women had added to the 
"sins" of bows and furbelows and frills, which the bishop de- 
plored, the yet more heinous error of such enormous hoops that 
it required fine maneuvering on the part of a grand dame to 
negotiate the door of the family coach ; and however pompous 
the seignior's air, it must have suffered temporary eclipse in 
that coach from the hoops of his spouse and his spouse's daugh- 
ters. As for the seignior, when he was not dressed in buckskin, 
leading bush rovers on raids, he appeared magnificent in all the 
grandeur that a J[.20 wig and Spanish laces and French rufHes 



THE HEROINE OF VERCHERES 169 

and imported satins could lend his portly person ; and if the 
figure were not portly, one may venture to guess, from the pic- 
tures of stout gentlemen in the quilted brocades of the period, 
that padding made up what nature lacked. 

Such a seigniory was Vercheres, some twenty miles from 
Montreal, on the south side of the St. Lawrence. M. de Ver- 
cheres was an officer in one of the regiments, and chanced to 
be absent from home during October of 1696, doing duty at 
Quebec. Madame de Vercheres was visiting in Montreal. 
Strange as it may seem, the fort and the family had been left 
in charge of the daughter, Madeline, at this time only fourteen 
years of age. At eight o'clock on the morning of October 22 
she had gone four hundred paces outside the fort gates when 
she heard the report of musket firing. The rest of the story 
may be told in her own words : 

I at once saw that the Iroquois were firing at our settlers, who lived near 
the fort. One of our servants call out : " Fly, Mademoiselle, fly ! The Iro- 
quois are upon us ! " 

Instantly I saw some forty-five Iroquois running towards me, already 
within pistol shot. Determined to die rather than fall in their hands, I ran 
for the fort, praying to the Blessed Virgin, " Holy Mother, save me ! Let 
me perish rather than fall in their hands ! " Meanwhile my pursuers paused 
to fire their guns. Bullets whistled past my ears. Once within hearing of 
the fort, I shouted, " To arms ! To arms ! " 

There were but two soldiers in the fort, and they were so overcome by fear 
that they ran to hide in the bastion. At the gates I found two women wail- 
ing for the loss of their husbands. Then I saw several stakes had fallen 
from the palisades where enemies could gain entrance ; so I seized the fallen 
planks and urged the women to give a hand putting them back in their 
places. Then I ran to the bastion, where I found two of the soldiers light- 
ing a fuse. 

" What are you going to do ? " I demanded. 

" Blow up the fort," answered one cowardly wretch. 

" Begone, you rascals," I commanded, putting on a soldier's helmet and 
seizing a musket. Then to my little brothers : " Let us fight to the death ! 
Remember what father has always said, — that gentlemen are born to shed 
their blood in the service of God and their King." 

My brothers and the two soldiers kept up a steady fire from the loop- 
holes. I ordered the cannon fired to call in our soldiers, who were hunting ; 



lyo CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

but the grief-stricken women inside kept wailing so loud that I had to warn 
them their shrieks would betray our weakness to the enemy. While I was 
speaking I caught sight of a canoe on the river. It was Sieur Pierre 
Fontaine, with his family, coming to visit us. I asked the soldiers to go out 
and protect their landing, but they refused. Then ordering Laviolette, our 
servant, to stand sentry at the gate, I went out myself, wearing a soldier's 
helmet and carrying a musket. I left orders if I were killed the gates were 
to be kept shut and the fort defended. I hoped the Iroquois would think 
this a ruse on my part to draw them within gunshot of our walls. That was 
just what happened, and I got Pierre Fontaine and his family safely inside 
by putting a bold face on. Our whole garrison consisted of my two little 
brothers aged about twelve, one servant, two soldiers, one old habitant 
aged eighty, and a few women servants. Strengthened by the Fontaines, 
we began firing. When the sun went down the night set in with a fearful 
storm of northeast wind and snow. I expected the Iroquois under cover 
of the storm. Gathering our people together, I said : " God has saved us 
during the day. Now we must be careful for the night. To show you I 
am not afraid to take my part, I undertake to defend the fort with the old 
man and a soldier, who has never fired a gun. You, Pierre Fontaine and 
La Bonte and Galet (the two soldiers), go to the bastion with the women 
and children. If I am taken, never surrender though I am burnt and cut to 
pieces before your eyes ! You have nothing to fear if you will make some 
show of fight ! " 

I posted two of my young brothers on one of the bastions, the old man 
of eighty on the third, and myself took the fourth. Despite the whistling of 
the wind we kept the cry " All 's well," " All 's well " echoing and reechoing 
from corner to corner. One would have imagined the fort was crowded with 
soldiers, and the Iroquois afterwards confessed they had been completely 
deceived ; that the vigilance of the guard kept them from attempting to 
scale the walls. About midnight the sentinel at the gate bastion called out, 
" Mademoiselle ! I hear something 1 " 

I saw it was our cattle. 

" Let me open the gates," urged the sentry. 

" God forbid," said I ; " the savages are likely behind, driving the 
animals in." 

Nevertheless I ^?'/V/open the gates and let the cattle in, my brothers stand- 
ing on each side, ready to shoot if an Indian appeared. 

At last came daylight ; and we were hopeful for aid from Montreal ; but 
Marguerite Fontaine, being timorous as all Parisian women are, begged her 
husband- to try and escape. The poor husband was almost distracted as she 
insisted, and he told her he would set her out in the canoe with her two 
sons, who could paddle it, but he would not abandon Mademoiselle in Ver- 
cheres. I had been twenty-four hours without rest or food, and had not 



INDIAN RAID AND COUNTER-RAID 171 

once gone from the bastion. On the eighth day of the siege Lieutenant de 
La Monnerie reached the fort during the night with forty men. 

One of our sentries had called out, " Who goes ? "' 

I was dozing with my head on a table and a musket across my arm. The 
sentry said there were voices on the water. I called, " Who are you ? " 

They answered, " French — come to your aid ! " 

I went down to the bank, saying: "Sir, but you are welcome! I sur- 
render my arms to you ! " 

" Mademoiselle," he answered, " they are in good hands." 

I forgot one incident. On the day of the attack I remembered about 
one in the afternoon that our linen was outside the fort, but the soldiers 
refused to go out for it. Armed with our guns, my brothers made two trips 
outside the walls for our linen. The Iroquois must have thought it a trick 
to lure them closer, for they did not approach. 

It need scarcely be added that brave mothers make brave 
sons, and it is not surprising that twenty-five years later, when 
Madeline Vercheres had become the wife of M. de La Naudiere, 
her own life was saved from Abenaki Indians by her little son, 
age twelve. 

But to return to Count Frontenac, marching up the steep 
streets of Quebec to Chateau St. Louis that October evening 
of 1689, amid the jubilant shouts of friends and enemies, Jesuit 
and Recollet, fur trader and councilor, — the haughty Governor 
set himself to the task of not only crushing the Iroquois but 
invading and conquering the land of the English, whom he be- 
lieved had furnished arms to the Iroquois. Now that war had 
been openly declared between England and France, Frontenac 
was determined on a campaign of aggression. He would keep 
the English so busy defending their own borders that they 
would have no time to tamper with the Indian allies of the 
French on the Mississippi. 

This is one of the darkest pages of Canada's past. War is 
not a pretty thing at any time, but war that lets loose the 
bloodhounds of Indian ferocity leaves the blackest scar of all. 

There were to be three war parties : one from Quebec to 
attack the English settlements around what is now Portland, 



172 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Maine ; a second from Three Rivers to lay waste the border 
lands of New Hampshire ; a third from Montreal to assault 
the English and Dutch of the Upper Hudson. 

The Montrealers set out in midwinter of 1690, a few months 
after Frontenac's arrival, led by the Le Moyne brothers, Ste. 
Helene and Maricourt and Iberville, with one of the Le Bers, 
and D'Ailleboust, nephew of the first D'Ailleboust at Montreal. 
The raiders consisted of some two hundred and fifty men, one 



^. 



lfe#? 




r^ Y^ 



^^^ 



' " -' , t^ 



QUEBEC, 1689 

hundred Indian converts and one hundred and fifty bushrovers, 
hardy, supple, inured to the wilderness as to native air, whites and 
Indians dressed alike in blanket coat, hood hanging down the 
back, buckskin trousers, beaded moccasins, snowshoes of short 
length for forest travel, cased musket on shoulder, knife, hatchet, 
pistols, bullet pouch hanging from the sashed belt, and provi- 
sions in a blanket, knapsack fashion, carried on the shoulders. 

The woods lay snow padded, silent, somber. Up the river bed 
of the Richelieu, over the rolling drifts, glided the bushrovers 



MASSACRE AT SCHENECTADY 1 73 

Somewhere on the headwaters of the Hudson the Indians 
demanded what place they were to attack. Iberville answered, 
"Albany." " Humph," grunted the Indians with a dry smile at 
the camp fire, " since ivhcn have the French become so brave .■' " 
A midwinter thaw now turned the snowy levels to swimming 
lagoons, where snowshoes were useless, and the men had to 
wade knee-deep day after day through swamps of ice water. 
Then came one of those sudden changes, — hard frost with a 
blinding snowstorm. Where the trail forked for Albany and 
Schenectady it was decided to follow the latter, and about 
four o'clock in the afternoon, on the 8th of February, the bush- 
rovers reached a hut where there chanced to be several Mohawk 
squaws. Crowding round the chimney place to dry their clothes 
now stiff with ice, the bushrangers learned from the Indian 
women that Schenectady lay completely unguarded. There had 
been some village festival that day among the Dutch settlers. 
The gates at both ends of the town lay wide open, and as if in 
derision of danger from the far distant French, a snow man had 
been mockingly rolled up to the western gate as sentry, with a 
sham pipe stuck in his mouth. The Indian rangers harangued 
their braves, urging them to wash out all wrongs in the blood 
of the enemy, and the Le Moyne brothers moved from man to 
man, giving orders for utter silence. At eleven that night, 
shrouded by the snowfall, the bushrovers reached the palisades 
of Schenectady. They had intended to defer the assault till 
dawn, but the cold hastened action, and, uncasing their mus- 
kets, they filed silently past the snow man in the middle of the 
open gate and encircled the little village of fifty houses. When 
the lines met at the far gate, completely investing the town, a 
wild yell rent the air ! Doors were hacked down. Indians with 
tomahawks stood guard outside the windows, and the dastardly 
work began, — as gratuitous a butchery of innocent people as 
ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids. Two hours 
the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to 
their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight 
men (among them the poor inoffensive dominie), ten women. 



174 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



twelve children ; and the victors held ninety captives. To the 
credit of Iberville he offered life to one Glenn and his family, 
who had aided in ransoming many French from the Iroquois, 
and he permitted this man to name so many friends that the 
bloodthirsty Indians wanted to know if all Schenectady were re- 
lated to this white man. One other house in the town was 

spared, — that of a widow with five 
children, under whose roof a wounded 
Frenchman lay. For the rest, Sche- 
nectady was reduced to ashes, the 
victors harnessing the Dutch farmers' 
horses to carry off the plunder. Of 
the captives, twenty-seven men and 
boys were carried back to Quebec. 
The other captives, mainly women and 
children, were given to the Indians. 
Forty livres for every human scalp 
were paid by the Sovereign Council 
of Quebec to the raiders. 

The record of the raiders led from 
Three Rivers by Frani^ois Hertel was 
almost the same. Setting out in 
January, he was followed by twenty- 
five French and twenty-five Indians 
to the border lands between Maine 
and New Hampshire. The end of 
March saw the bushrovers outside 
the little village of Salmon Falls. 
Thirty inhabitants were tomahawked 
on the spot, the houses burned, and one hundred prisoners carried 
off ; but news had gone like wildfire to neighboring settlements, 
and Hertel was pursued by two hundred Englishmen. He placed 
his bushrovers on a small bridge across Wooster River and here 
held the pursuers at bay till darkness enabled him to escape. 

But the darkest deed of infamy was perpetrated by the third 
band of raiders, — a deed that reveals the glories of war as they 




FRENCH SOLDIER OF THE 
PERIOD 



THE MASSACRE AT FORT LOYAL 



175 



exist, stripped of pageantry. Portneuf had led the raiders from 
Quebec, and he was joined by that famous leader of the Abenaki 
Indians, Baron de Saint-Castin, from the border lands between 
Acadia and Maine. Later, when Hertel struck through the 
woods with some of his followers, Portneuf's men numbered five 
hundred. With these he attacked Fort Loyal, or what is now 
Portland, Maine, in the month of June. The fort boasted eight 
great guns and one hundred soldiers. Under cover of the guns 
Lieutenant Clark and thirty men sallied out to reconnoiter the 
attacking forces ambushed in woods round a pasturage. At a 
musket crack the English were literally cut to pieces, four men 
only escaping back to the fort. The French then demanded un- 
conditional surrender. The English asked six days to consider. 
In six days English vessels would have come to the rescue. 
Secure, under a bluff of the ocean cliff, from the cannon fire of 
the fort, the French began to trench an approach to the palisades. 
Combustibles had been placed against the walls, when the Eng- 
lish again asked a parley, offering to surrender if the French 
would swear by the living God to conduct them in safety to the 
.nearest English post. To these conditions the French agreed. 
Whether they could not control their Indian allies or had not 
intended to keep the terms matters little. The English had no 
sooner marched from the fort than, with a wild whoop, the Indians 
fell on men, women, and children. Some were killed by a single 
blow, others reserved for the torture stake. Only four English- 
men survived the onslaught, to be carried prisoners to Quebec. 
The French had been victorious on all three raids ; but they 
were victories over which posterity will never boast, which no 
writer dare describe in all the detail of their horrors, and which 
leave a black blot on the escutcheon of Canada. 

It was hardly to be expected that the New England colonies 
would let such raids pass unpunished. The destruction of Sche- 
nectady had been bad enough. The massacre of Salmon Falls 
caused the New Englanders to forget their jealousies for the 
once and to unite in a common cause. All the colonies agreed 



1/6 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



to contribute men, ships, and money to invade New France by 
land and sea. The land forces were placed under Winthrop and 
Schuyler; but as smallpox disorganized the expedition before 
it reached Lake Champlain, the attack by land had little other 
effect than to draw Frontenac from Quebec down to Montreal, 
where Captain Schuyler, with Dutch bushmen, succeeded in 
ravaging the settlements and killing at least twenty French. 

The expedition by sea was placed under Sir William Phips 
of Massachusetts, — a man who was the very antipodes of 

Frontenac. One of a 
poor family of twenty- 
six children, Phips had 
risen from being a 
shepherd boy in Maine 
to the position of ship's 
carpenter in Boston. 
Here, among the har- 
bor folk, he got wind 
of a Spanish treasure 
ship containing a mil- 
lion and a half dollars' 
worth of gold, which 
had been sunk off the 
West Indies. Going to 
England, Phips suc- 
ceeded in interesting 
that same clique of courtiers who helped Radisson to establish 
the Hudson's Bay Company, — Albemarle and Prince Rupert 
and the King ; and when, with the funds which they advanced, 
Phips succeeded in raising the treasure vessel, he received, in 
addition to his share of the booty, a title and the appointment 
as governor of Massachusetts. 

Here, then, was the daring leader chosen to invade New 
France. Phips sailed first for Port Royal, which had in late 
years become infested with French pirates, preying on Boston 
commerce. Word had just come of the fearful massacres of 




SIR WILLIAM PHIPS 



BOSTON ROUSED TO ACTION 



177 



colonists at Portland. Boston was inflamed with a spirit of 
vengeance. The people had appointed days of fasting and prayer 
to invoke Heaven's blessing on their war. When Phips sailed 
into Annapolis Basin with his vessels and seven hundred men 
in the month of May, he found the French commander, Meneval, 
ill of the gout, with a garrison of about eighty soldiers, but all 
the cannon chanced to be dismounted. The odds against the 
French did not permit resistance. Meneval stipulated for an 
honorable surrender, — all property to be respected and the 
garrison to be sent to some French port ; but no sooner were 
the English in possession than, like the French at Portland, they 
broke the pledge. There was no massacre as in Maine, but 
plunderers ran riot, seizing everything on which hands could 
be laid, ransacking houses and desecrating the churches; and 
sixty of the leading people, including Meneval and the priests, 
were carried off as prisoners. Leaving one English flag flying, 
Phips sailed home. 

Indignation at Boston had been fanned to fury, for now all 
the details of the butchery at Portland were known ; and Phips 
found the colony mustering a monster expedition to attack the 
very stronghold of French power, — Quebec itself. England 
could afford no aid to her colonies, but thirty-two merchant 
vessels and frigates had been impressed into the service, some 
of them carrying as many as forty-four cannon. Artisans, 
sailors, soldiers, clerks, all classes had volunteered as fighters, 
to the number of twenty-five hundred men ; but there was 
one thing lacking, — they had no pilot who knew the St. Law- 
rence. Full of confidence born of inexperience, the fleet set sail 
on the 9th of August, commanded again by Phips. 

Time was wasted ravaging the coasts of Gaspe, holding long- 
winded councils of war, arguing in the commander's stateroom 
instead of drilling on deck. Three more weeks were wasted 
poking about the lower St. Lawrence, picking up chance vessels 
off Tadoussac and Anticosti. Among the prize vessels taken 
near Anticosti was one of Jolliet's, bearing his wife and mother- 
in-law. The ladies delighted the hearts of the Puritans by the 



178 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OE THE NORTH 



news that not more than one hundred men garrisoned Quebec ; 
but Phips was reckoning without his host, and his host was 
Frontenac. Besides, it was late in the season — the middle of 

October — before the 
English fleet rounded 
the Island of Orleans 
and faced the Citadel of 
Quebec. 

Indians had carried 
word to the city that an 
Englishwoman, taken 
prisoner in their raids, 
had told them more than 
thirty vessels had sailed 
from Boston to invade 
New France. Frontenac 
was absent in Montreal. 
Quickly the commander 
at Quebec sent coureurs 
with warning to Fronte- 
nac, and then set about 
casting up barricades in 
the narrow streets that 
led from Lower to Upper 
Town. 

Frontenac could not 
credit the news. Had he 
not heard here in Mon- 
treal from Indian cou- 
reurs how the English 
overland expedition lay 
rotting of smallpox near 
Lake Champlain, such pitiable objects that the Iroquois refused 
to join them against the French ? New France now numbered a 
population of twelve thousand and could muster three thousand 
fighting men ; and though the English colonies numbered twenty 




I (>r\ 1 1 \<i i\ I KN \f 
(From a statue at Quebec) 



QUEBEC BESIEGED 179 

thousand people, how could they, divided by jealousies, send an 
invading army of twenty-seven hundred, as the rumor stated ? 
Frontenac, grizzled old warrior, did not credit the news, but, all 
the same, he set out amid pelting rains by boat for Quebec. Half- 
way to Three Rivers more messengers brought him word that 
the English fleet were now advancing from Tadoussac. He sent 
back orders for the commander at Montreal to rush the bush- 
rovers down to Quebec, and he himself arrived at the Citadel 
just as the Le Moyne brothers anchored below Cape Diamond 
from a voyage to Hudson Bay. Maricourt Le Moyne reported 
how he had escaped past the English fleet by night, and it 
would certainly be at Quebec by daybreak. 

Scouts rallied the bushrangers on both sides of the St. 
Lawrence to Quebec's aid. Frontenac bade them guard the 
outposts and not desert their hamlets, while Ste. Helene and 
the other Le Moynes took command of the sharpshooters in 
Lower Town, scattering them in hiding along the banks of the 
St. Charles and among the houses facing the St. Lawrence below 
Castle St. Louis. 

Sure enough, at daybreak on Monday, October 16, sail after 
sail, thirty-four in all, rounded the end of Orleans Island and 
took up position directly opposite Quebec City. It was a cold, 
wet autumn morning. Fog and rain alternately chased in gray 
shadows across the far hills, and above the mist of the river 
loomed ominous the red-gray fort which the English had come 
to capture. Castle St. Louis stood where Chateau Frontenac 
stands to-day ; and what is now the promenade of a magnificent 
terrace was at that time a breastwork of cannon extending on 
down the sloping hill to the left as far as the ramparts. In fact, 
the cannon of that period were more dangerous than they are 
to-day, for long-range missiles have rendered old-time fortifica- 
tions adapted for close-range fighting almost useless ; and the 
cannon of Upper Town, Quebec, that October morning swept 
the approach to three sides of the fort, facing the St. Charles, 
opposite Point Levis and the St. Lawrence, where it curves back 
on itself ; and the fourth side was sheer wall — invulnerable. 



i8o 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



With a rattling of anchor chains and a creaking of masts the 
great sails of the English fleet were lowered, and a little boat 
put out at ten o'clock under flag of truce to meet a boat half- 
way from Lower Town. Phips' messenger was conducted blind- 




CASTLE ST. LOUIS 

fold up the barricaded streets leading to Castle St. Louis ; and 
the gunners had been instructed to clang their muskets on the 
stones to giv^e the impression of great numbers. Suddenly the 
bandage was taken from the man's eyes and he found himself 
in a great hall, standing before the august presence of Frontenac, 
surrounded by a circle of magnificently dressed officers. The 
New Englander delivered his message, ■ — Phips' letter demand- 
ing surrender: '•'Your prisoners^ your persons, your estates . . . 
and should yo?i refuse, I am resolved by the help of God, in whom 
I trust, to revenge by force of arms all our zvrongs." . . . As the 
reading of the letter was finished the man looked up to see an 
insolent smile pass round the faces of Frontenac's officers, one 
of whom superciliously advised hanging the bearer of such inso- 
lence without waste of time. The New Englander pulled out 
his watcli and signaled that he must have Frontenac's answer 
within an hour. The haughty old Governor pretended not to 
see the motion, and then, with a smile like ice, made answer in 



PHIPS AND FRONIKNAC l8i 

words that Ikuc become renowned : " I shall not keep you waiting- 
so loni;- ! Tell your General I do not recognize King William ! 
I know no king of England but King James! Does your 
General suppose that these brave gentlemen" — pointing to his 
officers — "would consent to trust a man who broke his word 
at Port Royal ?" 

As the shout of applause died away, the trembling New Eng- 
lander asked Frontenac if he would put his answer in writing. 

" No," thundered the old Governor, never hai:)pier than when 
fighting, " I will answer your General with my cannon ! I shall 
teach him that a man of my rank" — ^ with covert sneer at 
Phips' origin, "is not to be summoned in such rude fashion! 
Let him do his best! I shall do mine !" 

It was now the turn of the English to be amazed. This was 
not the answer they had expected from a fort weakly garrisoned 
by a hundred men. If they had struck and struck c^uickly, they 












ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690 

might yet have won the day ; but all Monday passed in futile 
arguments and councils of war, and on Tuesday, the 17th, 
towards night, was heard wild shf)uting within Quebec walls. 

" My faith. Messieurs !" exclaimed one of the P'rench prisoners 
aboard Phips' ship ; " now you have lost your chance ! Those 



l82 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

are the coureurs de bois from Montreal and the bushrovers of 
the Pays d'en Haut, eight hundred strong." 

The news at last spurred Phips to action. All that night the 
people of Quebec could hear the English drilling, and shouting 
''God save King William ! " with beat of drum and trumpet calls 
that set the echoes rolling from Cape Diamond ; and on the 
1 8th small boats landed fourteen hundred men to cross the St. 
Charles River and assault the Lower Town, while the four largest 
ships took up a position to cannonade the city. It was four in 
the afternoon before the soldiers had been landed amid pepper- 
ing bullets from the Le Moyne bushrovers. Only a few cannon 
shots were fired, and they did no damage but to kill an urchin 
of the Upper Town. 

Firing began in earnest on the morning of October 19. The 
river was churned to fury and the reverberating echoes set the 
rocks crashing from Cape Diamond, but it was almost impos- 
sible for the English to shoot high enough to damage the upper 
fort. It was easy for the French to shoot down, and great 
wounds gaped from the hull of Phips' ship, while his masts went 
over decks in flame, flag and all. The tide drifted the admiral's 
flag on shore. The French rowed out, secured the prize, and a 
jubilant shout roared from Lower Town, to be taken up and 
echoed and reechoed from the Castle ! For two more days 
bombs roared in midair, plunging through the roofs of houses in 
Lower Town or ricochetting back harmless from the rock wall 
below Castle St. Louis. At the St. Charles the land forces 
were fighting blindly to effect a crossing, but the Le Moyne 
bushrovers lying in ambush repelled every advance, though Ste. 
Helene had fallen mortally wounded. On the morning of the 
2 1 St the French could hardly believe their senses. The land 
forces had vanished during the darkness of a rainy night, and 
ship after ship, sail after sail, was drifting downstream — was 
it possible.'' — in retreat. Another week's bombarding would 
have reduced Quebec to flame and starvation ; but another 
week would have exposed Phips' fleet to wreckage from winter 
weather, and he had drifted down to Isle Orleans, where the 



RETREAT OF THE ENGLISH 183 

dismantled fleet paused to rig up fresh masts. It was Madame 
Jolliet who suggested to the Puritan commander an exchange 
of the prisoners captured at Port Royal with the English from 
Maine and New Hampshire held in Quebec. She was sent 
ashore by Phips and the exchange was arranged. Winter gales 
assailed the English fleet as it passed Anticosti, and what with 
the wrecked and wounded, Phips' loss totaled not less than a 
thousand men. 

Frontenac had been back in Canada only a year, and in that 
time he had restored the prestige of French power in America. 
The Iroquois were glad to sue for peace, and his bitterest ene- 
mies, the Jesuits, joined the merr^^makers round the bonfires of 
acclaim kindled in the old Governor's honor as the English re- 
treated, and the joy bells pealed out, and processions surged 



CASTLE ST. L(UTS, QUEBEC 

shouting through the streets of Quebec ! From Hudson Bay to 
the Mississippi, from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the 
land of the Sioux, French power reigned supreme. Only Port 
Nelson, high up on the west coast of Hudson Bay, remained un- 
subdued, draining the furs of the prairie tribes to England away 
from Quebec. Iberville had captured it in the fall of 1694, at 
the cost of his brother Chateauguay's life ; but when Iberville 
departed from Hudson Bay, English men-of-war had come out in 
1696 and wrested back this most valuable of all the fur posts. 
It was now determined to drive the English forever from Hud- 
son Bay. Le Moyne d' Iberville was chosen for the task. 

April, 1697, Serigny Le Moyne was dispatched from P^-ance 
with five men-of-war to be placed under the command of Iber- 
ville at Placentia, Newfoundland, whence he was "to proceed 



i84 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



to Hudson Bay and to leave not a vestige of the English in the 
North." The frigates left Newfoundland July 8. Three weeks 
later they were crushing through the ice jam of Hudson Straits. 
Iberville commanded the Pelican with two hundred and fifty 
men. Bienville, a brother, was on the same ship. Serigny com- 
manded the Palmier, and there were three other frigates, the 




PLAN' OF QUKBEC (after Franquelin, Jt)«3) 



Profound, the Violent, the Wasp. Ice locked round the fleet at 
the west end of Hudson Straits, and fog lay so thick there was 
nothing visible of any ship but the masthead. For eighteen 
days they lay, crunched and rammed and separated by the ice 
drive, till on August 25, early in the morning, the fog suddenly 
lifted. Iberville saw that Serigny' s ship had been carried back 



IBERVILLE'S GALLANT SEA FIGHT 185 

in the straits. The JJ^as/^ and Violoit were not to be seen, but 
straight ahead, locked in the ice, stood the Profound, and beside 
the French vessel three English frigates, the HainpsJiirc, the 
Dcerijig, the Hiidsoiis Baj, on their annual voyage to Nelson ! 
A lane of water opened before Iberville. Like a bird the Pel- 
ican spread her wings to the wind and fled. 

September 3 Iberville sighted Port Nelson, and for two days 
cruised the offing, scanning the sea for the rest of his fleet. 
Early on September 5 the sails of three vessels heaved and rose 
above the watery horizon. Never doubting these were his own 
ships, Iberville signaled. There was no answer. A sailor scram- 
bled to the masthead and shouted down terrified warning. These 
were not the French ships ! They were the English frigates 
bearing straight down on the single French vessel commanded 
by Iberville ! 

On one side was the enemy's fort, on the other the enemy's 
fleet coming over the waves before a clipping wind, all sails set. 
Of Iberville's crew forty men were ill of scurvy. Twenty-five 
had gone ashore to reconnoiter. He had left one hundred and 
fifty fighting men. Amid a rush of orders, ropes were stretched 
across decks for handhold, cannon were unplugged, and the 
batterymen below decks stripped themselves for the hot work 
ahead. The soldiers assembled on decks, sword in hand, and the 
Canadian bushrovers stood to the fore, ready to leap across the 
enemy's decks. 

By nine in the morning the ships were abreast, and roaring 
cannonades from the English cut the decks of the Pelican to 
kindling wood and set the masts in flame. At the same instant 
one fell blast of musketry mowed down forty French ; but Iber- 
ville's batterymen below decks had now ceased to pour a stream 
of fire into the English hulls. The odds were three to one, and 
for four hours the battle raged, the English shifting and sheer- 
ing to lock in death grapple, Iberville's sharpshooters peppering 
the decks of the foe. 

It had turned bitterly cold. The blood on the decks became 
ice, and each roll of the sea sent wounded and dead weltering 



1 86 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



from rail to rail. Such holes had been torn in the hulls of both 
English and French ships that the gunners below decks were 
literally looking into each other's smoke-grimmed faces. Sud- 
denly all hands paused. A frantic scream cleft the air. The 
vessels were careening in a tempestuous sea, for the great ship 
HaDipshire had refused to answer to the wheel, had lurched, 
had sunk, — • sunk swift as lead amid hiss of flames into the 




LANDING OF IBERVILLE S MEN AT PORT NELSON 
(.\fter La Potherie) 

roaring sea ! Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men 
escaped. The frigate Hiidsoiis Bay surrendered and the Dccr- 
ing fled. Iberville was victor. 

But a storm now broke in hurricane gusts over the sea. Iber- 
ville steered for land, but waves drenched the wheel at every 
wash, and, driving before the^ storm, the Pelican floundered in 
the sands a few miles from Nelson. All lifeboats had been 
shot away. In such a sea the Canadian canoes were, useless. 
The shattered masts were tied in four-sided racks. To these 



NELSON SURRENDERS 



187 



Iberville had the wounded bound, and the crew plunged for the 
shore. Eighteen men perished going ashore in the darkness. 
On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French 
castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bul- 
lets whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had 
sent out his sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now 
joined him, and, mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader 
marched against the fort. Storm had permitted the French to 








CAPTURE OF FORT NELSON BY THE FRENCH 

(After La Fotherie) 

land their cannon undetected. Trenches were cast up, and three 
times Serigny Le Moyne was sent to demand surrender. 

"The French are desperate," he urged. "They must take 
the fort or perish of want, and if you continue the fight there 
will be no mercy given." 

The Hudson's Bay people capitulated and were permitted to 
march out with arms, bag and baggage. An English ship car- 
ried the refugees home to the Thames. 

The rest of Iberville's career is the story of colonizing the 
Mississippi. He was granted a vast seigniory on the Bay of 



l88 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Chaleur, and in 1699 given a title. On his way from the Louisi- 
ana colony to France his ship had paused at Havana. Here 
Iberville contracted yellow fever and died while yet in the prime 
of his manhood, July 9, 1706. 

After the victory on Hudson Bay the French were supreme 
in America and Frontenac supreme in New France. The old 
white-haired veteran of a hundred wars became the idol of Que- 
bec. Friends and enemies, Jesuits and Recollets, paid tribute 
to his worth. In November of 1698 the Governor passed from 
this life in Castle St. Louis at the good old age of seventy-eight. 
He had demonstrated — demonstrated in action so that his 
enemies acknowledged the fact — that the sterner virtues of 
the military chieftain go farther towards the making of great 
nationhood than soft sentiments and religious emotionalism. 



CHAPTER X 

FROM 1('.98 TO 1713 

While Frontenac was striking terror into the heart of New 
England with his French Canadian bushrovers, the life of the 
people went on in the same grooves. Spite of a dozen raids on 
the Iroquois cantons, there was still danger from the warriors 
of the Mohawk, but the Iroquois braves had found a new stamp- 
ing ground. Instead of attacking Canada they now crossed west- 
ward to war on the allies of the French, the tribes of the Illinois 
and the Mississippi ; and with them traveled their liege friends, 
English traders from New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

The government of Canada continued to be a despotism, pure 
and simple. The Supreme Council, consisting of the governor, 
the intendant, the bishop, and at different times from three to 
twelve councilors, stood between the people and the King of 
France, transmitting the King's will to the people, the people's 
wants to the King ; and the laws enacted by the council ranged 
all the way from criminal decrees to such petty regulations as 
a modern city wardman might pass. Laws enacted to meet 
local needs, but subject to the veto of an absent ruler, who knew 
absolutely nothing of local needs, exhibited all the absurdities 
to be expected. The King of France desires the Sovereign 
Council to discourage the people from using horses, which are 
supposed to cause laziness, as "it is needful the inhabitants keep 
up their snowshoe travel so necessary in their wars." " If in 
two years the numbers of horses do not decrease, they are to be 
killed for meat." Then comes a law that reflects the presence 
of the bishop at the governing board. Horses have become the 
pride of the country beaux, and the gay be-ribboned carrioles 
are the distraction of the village cure. " Men are forbidden to 
gallop their horses within a third of a mile from the church on 

1S9 



I90 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Sundays." New laws, regulations, arrests, are promulgated by 
the public crier, " crying up and down the highway to sound 
of trumpet and drum," chest puffed out with self-importance, 
gold braid enough on the red-coated regalia to overawe the 
simple habitants. Though the companies holding monopoly 
over trade yearly change, monopoly is still all-powerful in New 
France, — so all pervasive that in 1 74 1 , in order to prevent smug- 
gling to defraud the Company of the Indies, it is enacted that 
"people using chintz-covered furniture" must upholster their 
chairs so that the stamp " La Cie des Indes " will be visible to 
the inspector. The matter of money is a great trouble to New 
France. Beaver is coin of the realm on the St. Lawrence, and 
though this beaver is paid for in French gold, the precious 
metal almost at once finds its way back to France for goods ; so 
that the colony is without coin. Government cards are issued 
as coin, but as Europe will not accept card money, the result is 
that gold still flows from New France, and the colony is flooded 
with paper money worthless away from Quebec. 

As of old, the people may still plead their own cases in law- 
suits before the Sovereign Council, but now the privileges of 
caste and class and feudalism begin to be felt, and it is enacted 
that gentlemen may plead their own cases before the council 
only "when wearing their swords." Young men are urged to 
qualify as notaries. Inaddition to the titleof " Sieur," baroniesare 
created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes 
of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms em- 
blazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach 
door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants 
are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great 
bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial mansion 
itself is taking on more of pomp. Cherry and mahogany furni- 
ture have replaced homemade, and the rough-cast walls are now 
covered with imported tapestries. 

Not gently does the Sovereign Council deal with delinquents. 
In 1735 it is enacted of a man who suicided, "that the corpse 
be tied to a cart, dragged on a hurdle, head down, face to ground, 



PETTY REGULATIONS AND BLUE LAWS 



191 



through the streets of the town, to be hung up by the feet, an 
object of derision, then cast into the river in default of a cess- 
pool " Criminals who evade punishment by flight are to be 
hanged in efhgy. Montreal citizens are ordered to have their 
chimneys cleaned every month and their houses provided with 
ladders. Also " the inhabitants of Montreal must not allow 
their pigs to run in the street," and they "are forbidden to 
throw snowballs at each other," and — a regulation which people 
who know Montreal winters will appreciate — " they are ordered 







r.tr C ayaua UN tjitit, poI^^'^ 




CONTEMPORARY MAP (after La Hontan, 1689) 
(The line shows the French idea of the territory under Enghsh control) 

to make paths through the snow before their houses," — to all of 
which petty regulations did royalty subscribe sign manual. 



The Treaty of Ryswick closed the war between France and 
England the year before Frontenac died, but it was not known 
in Canada till 1698. As far as Canada was concerned it was 
no peace, barely a truce. Each side was to remain in pos- 
session of what it held at the time of the treaty, which meant 
that France retained all Hudson Bay but one small fort. Though 
the English of Boston had captured Port Royal, they had left 



192 CANADA: THP: EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

no sign of possession but their flag flying over the tenantless 
barracks. The French returned from the woods, tore the flag 
down, and again took possession ; so that, by the Treaty of Rys- 
wick, Acadia too went back under French rule. 

Indeed, matters were worse than before the treaty, for there 
could be no open war ; but when English settlers spreading up 
from Maine met French traders wandering down from Acadia, 
there was the inevitable collision, and it was an easy trick for 
the rivals to stir up the Indians to raid and massacre and indis- 
criminate butchery. For Indian raids neither country would be 
responsible to the other. The story belongs to the history of 
the New England frontier rather than to the record of Canada. 
It is a part of Canada's past which few French writers tell and 
all Canadians would fain blot out, but which the government 
records prove beyond dispute. Indian warfare is not a thing of 
grandeur at its best, but when it degenerates into the braining 
of children, the bayoneting of women, the mutilation of old men, 
it is a horror without parallel ; and the amazing thing is that 
the white men, who painted themselves as Indians and helped 
to wage this war, were so sure they were doing God's work that 
they used to kneel and pray before beginning the butchery. To 
understand it one has to go back to the Middle Ages in imagina- 
tion. New France was violently Catholic, New England violently 
Protestant. Bigotry ever looks out through eyes of jaundiced 
hatred, and in destroying what they thought was a false faith, 
each side thought itself instrument of God. As for the French 
governors behind the scenes, who pulled the strings that let 
loose the helldogs of Indian war, they were but obeying the 
kingcraft of a royal master, who would use Indian warfare to 
add to his domain. 

" The English have sent us presents to drive the Black 
Gowns away," declared the Iroquois in 1702 regarding the 
French Jesuits. "You did well," writes the King of France to 
his Viceroy in Quebec, " to urge the Abenakis of Acadia to 
raid the English of Boston." The Treaty of Ryswick became 



MASSACRE OF DEERFIELD 



19: 



known at Quebec towards the end of 1698. The border war- 
fare of ravage and butchery had begun by 1701, the English 
giving presents to the Iroquois to attack the French of the 
IlUnois, the French giving presents to the Abenakis to raid the 
New England borders. Quebec offers a reward of twenty crowns 
for the scalp of every white man brought from the English 
settlements. New England retaliates by offering ;^20 for every 
Indian prisoner under ten years of age, ;^40 for every scalp of 
full-grown Indian. Pres- 
ently the young 7ioblcssc 
of New France are off to 
the woods, painted like 
Indians, leading crews 
of wild bush rovers on 
ambuscade and mid- 
night raid and border 
foray. 

"We must keep 
things stirring towards 
Boston," declared Vau- 
dreuil, the French gov- 
ernor. Midwinter of 
1 704 Hertel de Rouville 
and his four brothers set 
out on snowshoes with 
fifty -one bushrovers and 
two hundred Indians for Massachusetts. Dressed in buckskin, 
with musket over shoulder and dagger in belt, the forest rangers 
course up the frozen river beds southward of the St. Lawrence, 
and on over the height of land towards the Hudson, two hundred 
and fifty miles through pine woods snow padded and silent as 
death. Two miles from Deerfield the marchers run short of food. 
It is the last day of February, and the sun goes down over roll- 
ing snowdrifts high as the slab stockades of the little frontier 
town whose hearth-fire smoke hangs low in the frosty air, curling 
and clouding and lighting to rainbow colors as the ambushed 




HERTEL DE ROUVILLE 



194 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

raiders watch from their forest lairs. Snowshoes are laid aside, 
packs unstrapped, muskets uncased and primed, belts reefed 
tighter. Twilight gives place to starlight. Candles on the sup- 
per tables of the settlement send long gleams across the snow. 
Then the villagers hold their family prayers, all unconscious that 
out there in the woods are the bushrovers on bended knees, utter- 
ing prayers of another sort. Lights are put out. The village lies 
wrapped in sleep. Still Rouville's raiders lie waiting, shivering 
in the snow, till starlight fades to the gray darkness that pre- 
cedes dawn. Then the bushrovers rise, and at moccasin pace, 
noiseless as tigers, skim across the snow, over the drifts, over the 
tops of the palisades, and have dropped into the town before a 
soul has awakened. There is no need to tell the rest. It was not 
war. It was butchery. Children were torn from their mother's 
breast to be brained on the hearthstone. Women were hacked 
to pieces. Houses were set on fire, and before the sun had 
risen thirty-eight persons had been slaughtered, and the French 
rovers were back on the forest trail, homeward bound with 
one hundred and si.x prisoners. Old and young, women of frail 
health and children barely able to toddle, were hurried along 
the trail at bayonet point. Those whose strength was unequal 
to the pace were summarily knocked on the head as they fagged, 
or failed to ford the ice streams. Twenty-four perished by the 
way. Of the one hunded and six prisoners scattered as captives 
among the Indians, not half were ever heard of again. The 
others were either bought from the Indians by Quebec people, 
whose pity was touched, or placed round in the convents to 
be converted to the Catholic faith. These were ultimately 
redeemed by the government of Massachusetts. 

New England's fury over such a raid in time of peace knew 
no bounds. Yet how were the English to retaliate .? To pursue 
an ambushed Indian along a forest trail was to follow a vanish- 
ing phantom. 

From earliest times Boston had kept up trade with Port 
Royal, and of late years Port Royal had been infested with 
French pirates, who raided Boston shipping. Colonel Ben 



MADAME FRENEUSE, THE PAINTED LADY 195 

Church of Long Island, a noted bushfighter, of gunpowder 
temper and form so stout that his men had always to hoist him 
over logs in their forest marches, went storming from New 
York to Boston with a plan to be revenged by raiding Acadia. 

Rouville's bushrovers had burned Deerfield the first of March. 
By May, Church had sailed from Boston with six hundred men 
on two frigates and half a hundred whaleboats, on vengeance 
bent. First he stopped at Baron St. Castin's fort in Maine. 
St. Castin it was who led the Indians against the English of 
Maine. The baron was absent, but his daughter was captured, 
with all the servants, and the fort was burned to the ground. 
Then up Fundy Bay sailed Church, pausing at Passamaquoddy 
to knock four Frenchmen on the head ; pausing at Port Royal 
to take eight men prisoners, kill cattle, ravage fields ; pausing 
at Basin of Mines to capture forty habitants, burn the church, 
and cut the dikes, letting the sea in on the crops ; pausing at 
Beaubassin, the head of Fundy Bay, in August, to set the yellow 
wheat fields in flames ! Then he sailed back to Boston with 
French prisoners enough to insure an exchange for the English 
held at Quebec. 

No sooner had English sails disappeared over the sea than 
the French came out of the woods. St. Castin rebuilt his fort 
in Maine. The local Governor, who had held on with his gates 
shut and cannon pointed while Church ravaged Port Royal 
village, now strengthened his walls. Acadia took a breath and 
went on as before, — a little world in itself, with the pirate ships 
slipping in and out, loaded to the water line with Boston booty ; 
with the buccaneer Basset throwing his gold round like dust ; 
with the brave soldier Bonaventure losing his head and losing 
his heart to the painted lady, Widow Freneuse, who came 
from nobody knew where and lived nobody knew how, and plied 
her mischief of winning the hearts of other women's husbands. 
" She must be sent away," thundered the priest from the pulpit, 
straight at the garrison ofhcer whose heart she dangled as her 
trophy. " She must be sent away," thundered the King's man- 
date ; but the King was in France, and Madame Freneuse 



196 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

wound her charms the tighter round the hearts of the garrison 
officers, and bided her time, to the scandal of the parish and 
impotent rage of the priest. Was she vixen or fool, this fair 
snake woman with the beautiful face, for whose smile the officers 
risked death and disgrace ? Was she spy or adventuress ? She 
signed herself as "Widow Freneuse," and had applied to the 
King for a pension as having grown sons fighting in the Indian 
wars. She will come into this story again, snakelike and soft- 
spoken, and appealing for pity, and fair to look upon, but leav- 
ing a trail of blood and treachery and disgrace where she goes. 

The fur trade of Port Royal at this time was controlled by a 
family ring of La Tours and Charnisays, descendants of the 
ancient foes ; and they lived a life of reckless gayety, spiced 
with all the excitement of war and privateering and matrimo- 
nial intrigue. Such was life tjiside Port Royal. Outside was 
the quiet peace of a home-loving, home-staying peasantry. Few 
of the farmers could read or write. The houses were little 
square Norman cottages, — "wooden boxes" the commandant 
called them, — - with the inevitable porch shaded by the fruit 
trees now grown into splendid orchards. By diking out the 
sea the peasants farmed the marsh lands and saved themselves 
the trouble of clearing the forests. Trade was carried on with 
Boston and the West Indies. No card money here ! The farmers 
of Acadia demanded coin in gold from the privateers who called 
for cargo, and it is said that in time of such raids as Colonel 
Church's, great quantities of this gold were carried out by 
night and buried in huge pots, — as much as 5000 louis d'ors 
(pounds) in one pot, — to be dug up after the raiders had de- 
parted. Naturally, as raids grew frequent, men sometimes made 
the mistake of digging up other men's pots, and one officer lost 
his reputation over it. All his knowledge of the outside world, 
of politics, of religion, the Acadian farmer obtained from his 
parish priest ; and the word of the cure was law. 

Encouraged by Church's success and stung by the raids of 
French corsairs from Port Royal, New England set herself seri- 
ously to the task of conquering Acadia. Colonel March sailed 



"OLD WOODEN SWORD" 197 

from Boston with one thousand men and twenty-three trans- 
ports, and on June 6, 1707, came into Port Royal. Misfortunes 
began from the first. March's men were the rawest of recruits, — 
fishermen, farmers, carpenters, turned into soldiers. Unused to 
military discipline, they resisted command. A French guard- 
house stood at the entrance to Port Royal Basin, and fifteen 
men at once fled to the fort with warning of the English inva- 
sion. Consequently, when Colonel March and Colonel Appleton 
attempted to land their men, they were serenaded by the shots 
of an ambushed foe. Also French soldiers deserted to the Eng- 
lish camp with fabulous stories about the strength of the French 
under Subercase. These yarns ought to have discredited them- 
selves, but they struck terror to the hearts of March's green 
fighters. Then came St. Castin from St. John River with bush- 
rovers to help Subercase. To the amazement of the French the 
English hoisted sail and returned, on June 16, without having 
fired more than a round of shot. The truth is, March's carpen- 
ters and fishermen refused to fight, though reenforcements joined 
them halfway home and they made a second attempt on Port 
Royal in August. March returned to Boston heartbroken, for 
his name had become a byword to the mob, and he was greeted 
in the streets with shouts of " Old Wooden Sword ! " 

While Boston was attempting to wreak vengeance on Acadia 
for the raiders of Quebec, the bushrovers from the St. Lawrence 
continued to scourge the outlying settlements of New England. 
To post soldiers on the frontier was useless. Wherever there 
were guards the raiders simply passed on to some unprotected 
village, and to have kept soldiers along the line of the whole 
frontier would have required a standing army. Massachusetts, 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, northern New York, — on the 
frontier of each reigned perpetual terror. And the fiendish work 
was a paying business to the pagan Indian ; for the Christian 
white men paid well for all scalps, and ransom money could 
always be extorted for captives. Barely had the Boston raid 
on Port Royal failed, when Governor de Vaudreuil of Quebec 



198 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF TH]-: NORTH 

retaliated by turning his raiders loose on Haverhill. The Eng- 
lish fleet failed at Port Royal in June. By dawn of Sunday, 
August 29, Hertel de Rouville had swooped on the English vil- 
lage of Haverhill with one hundred Canadian bushrovers and 
one hundred and fifty Indians. The story of one raid is the 
story of all ; so this one need not be told. As the raiders were 
discovered at daylight, tiie people had a chance to defend them- 
selves, and some of the villagers escaped, the family of one 
being hidden by a negro nurse under tubs in the cellar. Alarm 
had been carried to the surnninding settlements, and men rode 
hot haste in pursuit of the forty prisoners. Hertel de Rouville 
coolly sent back word, if the pursuers did not desist, all the pris- 
oners would be scalped and left on the roadside. Some fifty 
English had fallen in the fight, but the French lost fifteen, 
among them young Jared of Vercheres, brother of the heroine. 
The only peace for Massachusetts was the peace that would 
be a victory, and again New England girded herself to the task 
of capturing Acadia. It was open war now, for the crowns of 
England and France were at odds. The troops were commanded 
by General Francis Nicholson, an English officer who brought 
out four war ships and four hundred trained marines. There 
were, besides, thirty-six transports and three thousand provin- 
cial troops, clothed and outfitted by Queen Anne of England. 
Sunday, September 24, 17 10, the fleet glides majestically into 
Port Royal Basin. That night the wind blew a hurricane and 
the transport Casar went aground with a crash that smashed 
her timbers to kindling wood and sent twenty-four men to a 
watery grave ; but General Nicholson gave the raw provincials 
no time for panic fright. Day dawn, Monday, drums rolling a 
martial tread, trumpets blowing, bugles setting the echoes fly- 
ing, flags blowing to the wind in the morning sun, he commanded 
Colonel Vetch to lead the men ashore. Inside Port Royal's pal- 
isades Subercase, the French commander, had less than three 
hundred men, half that number absolutely naked of clothing, 
and all short of powder. There were not provisions to last a 
month ; but, game to his soul's marrow, as all the warriors of 



SUBERCASE AT PORT ROYAL 199 

those early days, Subercase put up a brave fight, sending his 
bombs singing over the heads of the Enghsh troops in a vain 
attempt to baffle the landing. Nicholson retaliated by moving 
his bomb ship, light of draught, close to the French fort and 
pouring a shower of bombs through the roofs of the French 
fort. Spite of the wreck the night before, by four o'clock Mon- 
day afternoon all the English had landed in perfect order and 
high spirits. Slowly the English forces swung in a circle com- 
pletely round the fort. Again and again, by daylight and dark, 



■ f 



Uv^..r 



I I A N 111 
.111 ]U:^ 



CONTEMPORARY PLAN OK PORT ROYAL BASIN 

Subercase's naked soldiers rushed, screeching the war whoop, to 
ambush and stampede the English line ; but Nicholson's regu- 
lars stood the fire like rocks, and the desperate sortie of the 
French ended in fifty of Subercase's soldiers deserting c-n masse 
to the English. By Friday Nicholson's guns were all mounted 
in place to bombard the little wooden fort. Subercase was des- 
perate. Women and children from the settlement had crowded 
into the fort for protection, and were now crazed with fear by 
the bursting bombs, while the naked soldiers could be kept on 
the walls only at the sword point of their commanding officers. 



200 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

For two hundred French to have held out longer against three 
thousand five hundred Enghsh would have been madness. Suber- 
case made the presence of the women in Port Royal an excuse 
to send a messenger with flag of truce across to Nicholson, asking 
the English to take the women under their protection. Nicholson 
might well have asked what protection the French raiders had 
accorded the women of the New England frontiers ; but he sent 
back polite answer that "as he was not warring on women and 
children" he would receive them in the English camp, meanwhile 
holding Subercase's messenger prisoner, as he had entered the 
English camp without warning, eyes unbound. Sunday, Octo- 
ber I, the English bombs again began singing overhead. Suber- 
case sends word he will capitulate if given honorable terms. 
For a month the parleying continues. Then November 13 the 
terms are signed on both sides, the English promising to fur- 
nish ships to carry the garrison to some French port and pledg- 
ing protection to the people of the settlement. November 14 the 
French officers and their ladies come across to the English camp 
and breakfast in pomp with the English commanders. Seven- 
teen New England captives are hailed forth from Port Royal 
dungeons, ■" all in rags, without shirts, shoes, or stockings." On 
the 1 6th Nicholson draws his men up in two lines, one on each 
side of Port Royal gates, and the two hundred French soldiers 
marched out, saluting Nicholson as they passed to the transports. 
On the bridge, halfway out, French officers meet the English 
officers, doff helmets, and present the keys to the fort. For the 
last time Port Royal changes hands. Henceforth it is English, 
and in gratitude for the Queen's help Nicholson renamed the 
place as it is known to-day, — Annapolis. Among the raiders 
capitulating is the famous bushrover Baron St. Castin of Maine. 

When Nicholson returned to Boston all New England went 
mad with delight. Thanksgiving services were held, joy bells 
rang day and night for a week, and bonfires blazed on village 
commons to the gleeful shoutings of rustic soldiers returned to 
the home settlements glorified heroes. 



PAUL MASCARENE'S PLIGHT 



20I 



At Annapolis (Port Royal) Paul Mascarene, a French Hugue- 
not of Boston, has mounted guard with two hundred and fifty 
New England volunteers. Colonel Vetch is nominally the Eng- 
lish governor ; but Vetch is in Boston the most of the time, and 
it is on Mascarene the burden of governing falls. His duties 
are not light. Palisades have been broken down and must be 
repaired. Bombs have torn holes in the fort roofs, and all that 
winter the rain leaks in 
as through a sieve. The 
soldier volunteers grum- 
ble and mope and sicken . 
And these are not the 
least of Paul Mascarene 's 
troubles. P'rench priests 
minister to the Acadian 
farmers outside the fort, 
to the sinister Indians 
ever lying in ambush, to 
the P'rench bushrovers 
under young St. Castin 
across P'undy Bay on 
St. John River. Not for 
love or money can Mas- 
carene buy provisions 
from the Acadians. Not 
by threats can he com- 
pel them to help mend 
the breaches in the pali- 
sades. The young commandant was only twenty-seven years of 
age, but he must have guessed whence came the unspoken 
hostility. The first miserable winter wears slowly past and the 
winter of 171 1 is setting in, with the English garrison even more 
poverty stricken than the year before, when there drifts into 
Annapolis Basin, in a birch canoe paddled by a New Bruns- 
wick Indian, a white woman with her little son. She has come, 
she says, from the north side of F'undy Bay, because the P'rench 




PAUL JNIASCARENE 



202 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

on St. John River are starving. Whether the story be true or 
false matters httle. It was the Widow Freneuse, the snake 
woman of mischief-making witchery, who had woven her spells 
round the officers in the days of the French at Port Royal. 
True or false, her story, added to her smile, excited sympathy, 
and she was welcomed to the shelter of the fort. It had been 
almost impossible for the English to obtain trees to repair the 
walls of the fort, and seventy English soldiers were sent out 
secretly by night to paddle up the river in a whaleboat for 
timber. Who conveyed secret warning of this expedition to the 
French bushraiders outside ? No doubt the fair spy. Widow 
Freneuse, could have told if she would ; but five miles from Port 
Royal, where the river narrowed to a place ever since known as 
Bloody Brook, a crash of musket shots flared from the woods on 
each side. Painted Indians, and Frenchmen dressed as Indians, 
among whom was a son of Widow Freneuse, dashed out. Six- 
teen English were killed, nine wounded, the rest to a man cap- 
tured, to be held for ransoms ranging from ^lO to ^50. Oddly 
enough, the very night after the attack, before news of it had 
come to Annapolis, the Widow Freneuse disappears from the 
fort. Henceforth Paul Mascarene's men kept guard night and 
day, and slept in their boots. Ever like a sinister shadow of evil 
moved St. Castin and his raiders through the Acadian wildwoods. 
Only one thing prevented the F'rench recapturing Port Royal 
at this time. All troops were required to defend Quebec itself 
from invasion. 

Nicholson's success at Port Royal spurred England and her 
American colonies to a more ambitious project, — to capture 
Quebec and subjugate Canada. This time Nicholson was to 
head twenty-five hundred provincial troops by way of Lake 
Champlain to the St. Lawrence, while a British army of twelve 
thousand, half soldiers, half marines, on fifteen frigates and forty- 
six transports, was to sail from Boston for Quebec. The navy 
was under command of Sir Ho vender Walker ; the army, of Gen- 
eral Jack Hill, a court favorite of Queen Anne's, more noted for 



COURT DANDIES CAUSE NAVAL DISASTER 203 

his graces than his prowess. The whole expedition is one of the 
most disgraceful in the annals of English war. The fleet left 
Boston on July 30, 171 1, Nicholson meanwhile waiting encamped 
on Lake Champlain. Early in August the immense fleet had 
rounded Sable Island and was off the shores of Anticosti. 
Though there was no good pilot on board, the two commanders 
nightly went to bed and slept the sleep of the just. Off Egg 
Islands, on the night of August 22, there was fog and a strong 
east wind. Walker evidently thought he was near the south 
shore, ignorant of the strong undertow of the tide here, which 
had carried his ships thirty miles off the course. The water was 
rolling in the lumpy masses of a choppy cross sea when a young 
captain of the regulars dashed breathlessly into Walker's state- 
room and begged him "for the Lord's sake to come on deck, 
for there are reefs ahead and we shall all be lost ! " 

With a seaman's laugh at a landsman's fears, the Admiral 
donned dressing gown and slippers and shuffled up to the decks. 
A pale moon had broken through the ragged fog wrack, and 
through the white light they plainly saw mountainous breakers 
straight ahead. Walker shouted to let the anchor go and drive 
to the wind. Above the roar of breakers and trample of panic- 
stricken seamen over decks could be heard the minute guns of 
the other ships firing for help. Then pitch darkness fell with 
slant rains in a deluge. The storm abated, but all night long, 
above the boom of an angry sea, could be heard shrieks and 
shoutings for help; and by the light of the Admiral's ship could 
be seen the faces of the dead cast up by the moil of the sea. 
Before dawn eight transports had suffered shipwreck and one 
thousand lives were lost. 

It was a night to put fear in the hearts of all but very brave 
men, and neither Walker nor Hill proved man enough to stand 
firm to the shock. Walker ascribed the loss to the storm and 
the storm to Providence ; and when war council was held three 
days later Jack Hill, the court dandy, was only too glad of excuse 
to turn tail and flee to England without firing a gun. Poor old 
Nicholson, waiting with his provincials up on Lake Champlain, 



204 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

goes into apoplexy with tempests of rage and chagrin, when he 
hears the news, stamping the ground, tearing off his wig, and shout- 
ing", " Rogues ! rogues ! " He burns his fort and disbands his men. 

The Peace of Utrecht in 171 3 for the time closed the war. 
France had been hopelessly defeated in Europe, and the terms 
were favorable to England. 

All of Hudson Bay was to be restored to the English ; but 
— note well — it was not specified where the boundaries were 
to be between Hudson Bay and Quebec. That boundary dispute 
came down as a heritage to modern days — thanks to the incom- 
petency and ignorance of the statesmen who arranged the treaty. 

Acadia was given to England, but Cape Breton was retained 
by the French, and — note well — it was not stated whether 
Acadia included New Brunswick and Maine, as the French 
formerly contended, or included only the peninsula south of the 
Bay of Fundy. That boundary dispute, too, came down. 

Newfoundland was acknowledged as an English possession, 
but the French retained the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, 
with fishing privileges on the shores of Newfoundland. That 
concession, too, has come down to trouble modern days, — thanks 
to the same defenders of colonial interests. 

The Iroquois were acknowledged to be subjects of England, 
but it was not stated whether that concession included the lands 
of the Ohio raided and subjugated by the Iroquois ; and that 
vagueness was destined to cost both New France and New- 
England some of its best blood. 

It has been stated, and stated many times without dispute, that 
when England sacrificed the interests of her colonies in boundary 
settlements, she did so because she was in honor bound to observe 
the terms of treaties. One is constrained to ask whose ignorance 
was responsible for the terms of those treaties. 

Looking back on the record so far, — both of France and 
England, — which has spent the more both of substance and of 
life for defense ; the mother countries or the colonies ? 



CHAPTER XI 
FROM 1713 TO 1755 

What with clandestine raids and open wars, it might be thought 
that the Httle nation of New France had vent enough for the 
buoyant energy of its youth. While the population of the Eng- 
lish colonies was nearing the million mark, New France had not 
60,000 inhabitants by 1759. Yet what had the little nation, whose 
mainspring was at Quebec, accomplished ? Look at the map ! 
Her bushrovers had gone overland to Hudson Bay far north as 
Nelson. Before 1700 Duluth had forts at Kaministiquia (near 
modern Fort Williams) on Lake Superior. Radisson, Marquette, 
Jolliet, and La Salle had blazed a trail to the Mississippi from 
what is now Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. By 1701 La Motte 
Cadillac had built wdiat is now Detroit in order to stop the prog- 
ress of the English traders up the lakes to Michilimackinac ; 
and by 1727 the Company of the Sioux had forts far west as 
Lake Pepin. W^ith Quebec as the hub of the wheel, draw spokes 
across the map of North America. Where do they reach .? From 
Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Missouri, to the Upper 
Mississippi, to Lake Superior, to Hudson Bay. Who blazed the 
way through these far pathless wilds '^ Nameless wanderers 
dressed in rags and tatters, — outcasts of society, forest rovers 
lured by the Unknown as by a siren, soldiers of fortune, penni- 
less, in debt, heartbroken, slandered, persecuted, driven by the 
demon of their own genius to earth's ends, — and to ruin ! 

Spite of clandestine raids and open wars, New France was 
now setting herself to stretch the lines of her discoveries farther 
westward. 

It will be remembered it was at Three Rivers that the Indians 
of the Up Country paused on their way down the St. Lawrence. 

205 



2o6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

From the days of Radisson in 1660 the passion for discovery 
had been in the very air of Three Rivers. In this Httle fort was 
born in 1686 Pierre Gaultier Varennes de La Verendrye, son of 
a French officer. From childhood the boy's ear must have been 
accustomed to the uncouth babbhngs of the half-naked Indians, 
whose canoes came swarming down the river soon as ice broke 
up in spring. One can guess that in his play the boy many a 
time simulated Indian voyageur, bushrover, coming home clad 
in furs, the envy of the villagers. At fourteen young Pierre had 
decided that he would be a great explorer, but destiny for the 
time ruled otherwise. At eighteen he was among the bushraiders 
of New England. Nineteen found him fighting the English in 
Newfoundland. Then came the honor coveted by all Canadian 
boys, — an appointment to the King's army in Europe. Young 
La Verendrye was among the French forces defeated by the 
great Marlborough ; but the Peace of LTtrecht sent him back to 
Canada, aged twenty-seven, to serve in the far northern fur post 
of Nepigon, eating his heart out with ambition. 

It was here the dreams of his childhood emerged like a com- 
manding destiny. Old Indian chief Ochagach drew maps on 
birch bark of a trail to the Western Sea. La Verendrye took 
canoe for Quebec, and, with heart beating" to the passion of a 
secret ambition, laid the drawings before Governor Beauharnois. 
He came just in the nick of time. English traders were pressing 
westward. New P'rance lent ready ear for schemes of wider 
empire. The court could grant no money for discoveries, but it 
gave La Verendrye permission for a voyage and monopoly in 
furs over the lands he might discover ; but the lands must be 
found before there would be furs, and here began the mundane 
worries of La Verendrye' s glory. 

Montreal merchants outfitted him, but that meant debt ; and 
his little party of fifty grizzled woodrovers set out with their 
ninety-foot birch canoes from Montreal on June 8, 1731. Three 
sons were in his party and a nephew, Jemmeraie, from the Sioux- 
country of the west. Every foot westward had been consecrated 
by heroism to set the pulse of red-blooded men jumping. There 



LA VERENDRYE'S ADVENTURING TO THE WEST 207 

was the seigniory of La Chine, named in derision of La Salle's 
project to find a path to China. There was the Long Sault, where 
Dollard had fought the Iroquois. There were the pink granite 
islands of Georgian Bay, where the Jesuits had led their harried 
Hurons. There was Michilimackinac, with the brawl of its vice 
and brandy and lawless traders from the woods, where La Motte 
Cadillac ruled before going to found Detroit. Seventy-eight days 
from Montreal, there were the pictured rocks of Lake Superior, 
purple and silent and deep as ocean, which Radisson had coasted 



Klli.istt.\ s . 




LA VERENDRYE'S FORTS AND THE RIVER OF THE WEST 
(After Jeffery's map, 1762) 

on his way to the Mississippi. Then La Verendrye came to 
Duluth's old stamping ground — Kaministiquia. 



The home-bound boats were just leaving the fur posts for the 
St. Lawrence. Frosts had already stripped the trees of foliage, 
and winter would presently lock all avenues of retreat in six 
months' ice. La Verendrye's men began to doubt the wisdom of 
chasing a will-o'-the-wisp to an unknown Western Sea. The ex- 
plorer sent half the party forward with his nephew Jemmeraie 
and his son Jean, while he himself remained at Kaministiquia 
with the mutineers to forage for provisions. 



2o8 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Winter found Jemmeraie's men on the Minnesota side of Rainy 
Lake, where they built Fort Pierre and drove a rich trade in furs 
with the encamped Crees. In summer of 1732 came La Veren- 
dr5^e, his men in gayest apparel marching before the awe-struck 
Crees with bugle blowing and flags flying. Then white men and 
Crees advanced in canoes to the Lake of the Woods, coasting 
from island to island through the shadowy defiles of the sylvan 
rocks along the Minnesota shore to the northwest angle. Here 
a second winter witnessed the building of a second post, Fort St. 
Charles, with four rows of fifteen-foot palisades and thatched- 
roofed log cabins. The Western Sea seemed far as ever, — like 
the rainbow of the child, ever fleeing as pursued, — and La 
Verendrye's merchant partners were beginning to curse him for 
a rainbow chaser. He had been away three years, and there were 
no profits. Suspicious that he might be defrauding them by pri- 
vate trade or sacrificing their interests to his own ambitions, they 
failed to send forward provisions for this year. La Verendrye 
was in debt to his men for three years' wages, in debt to his 
partners for three years' provisions. To fail now he dared not. 
Go forward he could not, so he hurried down to Montreal, where 
he prevailed on the merchants to continue supplies by the simple 
argument that, if they stopped now, there would be total loss. 

Young Jean La Verendrye and Jemmeraie have meanwhile 
descended Winnipeg River's white fret of waterfalls to Winnipeg 
Lake, where they build Fort Maurepas, near modern Alexander, 
— and wait. Fishing failed. The hunt failed. The winter of 1735- 
1736 proved of such terrible severity that famine stalked through 
the western woods. La Verendrye's three forts were reduced to 
diet of skins, moccasin soup, and dog meat. In desperation Jem- 
meraie set out with a few voyageurs to meet the returning com- 
mander, but privation had undermined his strength. He died on 
the way and was buried in his hunter's blanket beside an unknown 
stream between Lake Winnipeg and the Lake of the Woods. 
Accompanied by the priest Aulneau, young Jean de La Veren- 
drye decided to rush canoes down from the Lake of the Woods 
to Michilimackinac for food and powder. A furious pace was 



ADVENTURERS REACH LAKE WINNIPEG 



209 



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to be kept all the way to Lake Superior. The voyageurs had 
risen early one morning in June, and after paddling some miles 
through the mist had landed to breakfast when a band of ma- 
rauding Sioux fell on them with a shout. The priest Aulneau 
fell pierced in the head by a stone-pointed arrow. Young Jean 
La Verendrye was literally hacked to pieces. Not a man of 
the seventeen French escaped, and Massacre Island became a 
place of ill omen to the 
French from that day. 
At last came the belated 
supplies, and by Febru- 
ary of 1737 La Veren- 
drye had moved his main 
forces west to Lake 
Winnipeg". This was no 
Western Sea, though 
the wind whipped the 
lake like a tide, — which 
explained the Lidian leg- 
end of an inland ocean. 
Though it was no West- 
ern Sea, it was a new 
empire for France. The 
bourne of the Unknown 
still fled like the rain- 
bow, and La Verendrye 
still pursued. 

Down to Quebec for more supplies with tales of a vast Beyond 
Land ! Back to Lake Winnipeg by September of 1738 with canoes 
gliding up the muddy current of Red River for the Unknown 
Land of the Assiniboines ; past Nettley Creek, then known as 
Massacre Creek or Murderers' River, from the Sioux having slain 
the encamped wives and children of the Cree who had gone to 
Hudson Bay with their furs ; between the wooded banks of what 
are now East and West Selkirk, flat to left, high to right ; track- 
ing up the Rapids of St. Andrews, thick oak woods to east, 



•^> 



LJ 




X. ■■ \ A I E X I Q "Ll-E ) 

y:,-ji. _ .. i . j^ ?! : 

MAP PUBLISHED IN PARIS IN 1752 SHOWING 
THE SUPPOSED SEA OF THE WEST 



2IO CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

rippling prairie russet in the autumn rolling to the west, — La 
Verendrye and his voyageurs came to the forks of Red River 
and the Assiniboine, or what is now known as the city of Win- 
nipeg. Where the two rivers met on the fiats to the west were 
the high scaffoldings of an ancient Cree graveyard, bizarre and 
eerie and ghostlike between the voyageurs and the setting sun. 
On the high river bank of what is now known as Assiniboine 
Avenue gleamed the white skin of ten Cree tepees, where two 
war chiefs waited to meet La Verendrye. Drawing up their 
canoes near where the bridge now spans between St. Boniface 
and Winnipeg, the voyageurs came ashore. 

It was a fair scene that greeted them, such a scene as any 
westerner may witness to-day of a warm September night when 
the sun hangs low like a blood-red shield, and the evening breeze 
touches the rustling grasses of the prairie beyond the city to the 
waves of an ocean. It was not the W'estern Sea, but it was a Sea 
of Prairie. It was a New World, unbounded by hill or forest, 
spacious as the very airs of heaven, fenced only by the blue dip 
of a shimmering horizon. It was a world, though La Verendrye 
knew it not, five times larger than New France, half as big as 
all Europe. He had discovered the Canadian Northwest. 

One can guess how the tired wanderers at rest beneath the 
uptilted canoes that night wondered whither their quest would 
lead them over the fire-dyed horizon where the sun was sinking 
as over a sea. The Cree chiefs told them of other lands and 
other peoples to the south, " who trade with a people who dwelt 
on the great waters beyond the mountains of the setting sun," 
— the Spaniards. 

Leaving men to knock up a trading post near the suburb now 
known as Fort Rouge, La Verendrye, on September 26, steers his 
canoes up the shallow Assiniboine far as what is now known as 
Portage La Prairie, where a trail leads overland to the Saskatch- 
ewan and so down to the English traders of Hudson Bay. But 
this is not the trail to the Western Sea ; La Verendrye's quest 
is set towards those people "who live on the great waters to 
the south." 



FROiM ASSINIBOINE TO MISSOURI 



21 1 



Fort de La Reine is built at the Portage of the Prairie, and 
October i8, to beat of drum, with flag flying, La Verendrye 
marches forth with fifty-two men towards Souris River for the 
land of the Mandanes on the Missouri. December 3 he is 
welcomed to the Mandane villages; but here is no Western Sea, 
only the broad current of the Missouri rolling turbulent and 
muddy southward towards the Mississippi ; but the Mandanes 
tell of a people to the far west, " who live on the great waters 

yssr 




MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED SEA OF THE WEST, WITH APPROACHES 
TO THE MISSISSIPPI AND GREAT LAKES, PARIS, 1755 

bitter for drinking, who dress in armor and dwell in stone 
houses." These must be the Spaniards. La Verendrye's c|uest 
has become a receding phantom. Leaving men to learn the 
Missouri dialects, La Verendrye marched in the teeth of mid- 
winter storms back to the Portage of the Prairie on the Assini- 
boine. Of that march, space forbids to tell. A blizzard raged, 
driving the fine snows into eyes and skin like hot salt. When 
the marchers camped at night they had to bury themselves in 
snow to keep from freezing. Drifts covered all landmarks. The 
men lost their bearings, doubled back on their own tracks, were 
frost-bitten, buffeted by the storm, and short of food. Christmas 



2 12 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

was passed in the camps of wandering Assiniboines, and Feb- 
ruary 10, 1739, the fifty men staggered, weak and starving, back 
to the Portage of the Prairie. 

The wanderings of La Verendrye and his sons for the next 
few years led southwestward far as the Rockies in the region of 
Montana, northwestward far as the Bow River branch of the 
Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, all La Verendrye's property had 
been seized by his creditors. Jealous rivals were clamoring for 
possession of his fur posts. The King had conferred on him 
the Order of the Cross of St. Louis, but eighteen years of ex- 
posure and worry had broken the explorer's health. On the eve 
of setting out again for the west he died suddenly on the 6th 
of December, 1749, at Montreal. 

Look again at the map ! The spokes of the wheel running 
out from Quebec extend to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to 
the Rockies on the west, to Hudson Bay on the north. And 
the population of New France does not yet number 60,000 peo- 
ple. Is it any wonder French Canadians look back on these 
days as the Golden Age .'' 

And while the bushrovers of Canada are pushing their way 
through the wilderness westward, there come slashing, tramp- 
ing, swearing, stamping through the mountainous wilds of West 
and East Siberia the Cossack soldiers of Peter the Great, led by 
the Dane, Vitus Bering, bound on discovery to the west coast of 
America. La Verendrye's men have crossed only half a conti- 
nent. Bering's Russians cross the width of two continents, 
seven thousand miles, then launch their crazily planked ships 
over unknown northern seas for America. F'rom 1729 to 
August of 1742 toil the Russian sea voyagers. Their story is 
not part of Canada's history. Suffice to say, December of 1741 
finds the Russian crews cast away on two desert islands of 
Bering Sea west of Alaska, now known as the Commander 
Islands. Half the crew of seventy-seven perish of starvation 
and scurvy. Bering himself lies dying in a sandpit, with the 
earth spread over him for warmth. Outside the sand holes, 



INTRI(;UF. WITH INDIANS 213 

where the Russians crouch, scream hurricane gales and white 
bihows and myriad sea birds. The ships have been wrecked. 
The Russians are on an unknown island. Day dawn, Decem- 
ber 8, lying" half buried in the sand, Bering breathes his last. 
On rafts made of wreckage the remnant of his crew find way 
back to Asia, but they have discovered a trail across the sea 
to a new land. Fur hunters are moving from the east, \vest- 
ward. Fur hunters are moving from the west, eastward. These 
two tides will meet and clash at a later era. 

The Treaty of Utrecht had stopped open war, but that did 
not prevent the bushrovers from raiding the border lands of 
Maine, of Massachusetts, of New York. The story of one raid 
is the story of all, and several have already been related. Now 
comes a half century of petty war that raged on the border 
lands from Saratoga and Northfield to Maine and New Bruns- 
wick. The story of these "little wars," as the Fren-ch called 
them, belongs more to the history of the United States than 
Canada. 

Nor did the Peace of Utrecht stop the double dealing and 
intrigue by which European rulers sought to use bigoted mission- 
aries and ignorant Indians as pawns in the game of statecraft. 

" Sentiments of opposition to the English in Acadia must be 
secretly fostered," commanded the King of France in 171 5, two 
years after Acadia had been deeded over to England. " The King- 
is pleased with the efforts of Pere Rasle to induce the Indians 
not to allow the English to settle on their lands," runs the 
royal dispatch of 172 1 regarding the border massacres of Maine. 
"Advise the missionaries in Acadia to do nothing that may 
serve as a pretext for sending them out of the country, but have 
them induce the Indians to organize enterprises against the 
English," command the royal instructions of 1744. "The In- 
dians," writes the Canadian Governor, "can be depended on to 
bring in the scalps of the English as long as we furnish ammu- 
nition. This is the opinion of the missionary, M. Le Loutre." 
Again, from the Governor of New France : " If the settlers of 



214 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Acadia hesitate to rise against their EngHsh masters, we can 
employ threats of the Indians and force. It is inconceivable that 
the English would try to remove these people. Letters from 
M. Le Loutre report that his Indians have intercepted dispatches 
of the English officers. M. Le Loutre will keep us informed of 
everything in Acadia. We have furnished him with secret sig- 
nals to our ships, which will tell us of every movement on the 
part of the enemy." 

Of all the hotbeds of intrigue, Acadia, from its position, had 
become the worst. Here was a population of French farmers, 
which in half a century had increased to 12,000, held in subjec- 
tion by an English garrison at Annapolis of less than two hun- 
dred soldiers so destitute they had neither shoes nor stockings, 
coats nor bedding. The French were guaranteed in the Treaty of 
Utrecht the freedom and privileges of their religion by the Eng- 
lish ; but in matters temporal as well as spiritual they were abso- 
lutely subject to priests, acting as spies for the Quebec plotters. 

France, as has been told, retained Cape Breton (Isle Royal) 
and Prince Edward Island (Isle St. Jean), and the Treaty of 
Utrecht had hardly been signed before plans were drawn on a 
magnificent scale for a French fort on Cape Breton to effect a 
threefold purpose, — to command the sea towards Boston, to re- 
gain Acadia, to protect the approach to the River St. Lawrence. 

The Island of Cape Breton is like a hand with its fingers stuck 
out in the sea. The very tip of a long promontory commanding 
one of the southern arms of the sea was chosen for the fort that 
was to be the strongest in all America. On three sides were 
the sea, with outlying islands suitable for powerful batteries and 
a harbor entrance that was both narrow and deep. To the rear 
was impassable muskeg — quaking moss above water-soaked bog. 
Two weaknesses only had the fort. There were hills to right 
and left from which an enemy might pour destruction inside the 
walls, but the royal engineers of France depended on the out- 
lying island batteries preventing any enemy gaining possession 
of these hills. By 1720 walls thirty-six feet thick had encircled 



THE BUILDING OF LOUISBURG 



215 



an area of over one hundred acres. Outside the rear wall had 
been excavated a ditch forty feet deep and eighty wide. Bris- 
tling from the six bastions of the walls were more than one 
hundred and eighty heavy cannon. Besides the two batteries 
commanding" the entrance to the harbor was an outer Royal 
Battery of forty cannon directly across the water from the fort, 
on the next finger of the island. Twenty years was the fort 
in building, costing what in those days was regarded as an enor- 
mous sum of money, — equal to $10,000,000. Such was Louis- 
burg, impregnable as far as human foresight could judge, — 
the refuge of corsairs that preyed on Boston commerce ; the 
haven of the schemers who intrigued to wean away the Acadians 
from English rule, the guardian sentinel of all approach to the 
St. Lawrence. 

"It would be well," wrote the King the very next year after 
the treaty was signed, " to attract the Acadians to Cape Breton, 
but act with caution." And now twenty years had passed. 
Some Acadians had gone to Cape Breton and others to Prince 
Edward Island ; but statecraft judged the simple Acadian 
farmer would be more useful where he was, — on the spot in 
Acadia, ready to rebel when open war would give the French of 
Louisburg a chance to invade. 

Late in 1744 Europe breaks into that flame of war known as 
the Austrian Succession. Before either Quebec or Boston knows 
of open war, Louisburg has word of it and sends her rangers 
burning fishing towns and battering at the rotten palisades of 
Annapolis (Port Royal). Port Royal is commanded by that same 
Paul Mascarene of former wars, grown old in service. The 
French bid him save himself by surrender before their fleet 
comes. Though Mascarene has less than a hundred men, the 
weather is in his favor. It is September. Winter will drive the 
invaders home, so he sends back word that he will bide his 
time till the hostile fleet comes. As for the Abbe Le Loutre, 
let the treacherous priest beware how he brings his murderous 
Indians within range of the fort guns ! Meanwhile the Acadian 
habitants are threatened with death if they do not rise to aid the 



2l6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

French, but they too bide their time, for if they rebel and fail, 
that too means death; and '■^ the Neutrals" refuse to stir till 
the invaders, from lack of provisions, are forced to decamp, and 
the Abbe Le Loutre, with his black hat drawn down over his 
eyes, vanishes into forest with his crew of painted warriors. 

News of the war and of the ravaging of Acadian fishing towns 
set Massachusetts in flame. To Boston, above all New England 
towns, was Louisburg a constant danger. The thing seemed 
absolute stark madness, — the thoughtless daring of foolhardy 
enthusiasts, — but it is ever enthusiasm which accomplishes the 
impossible ; and April 30, 1745, after only seven weeks of prep- 
aration, an English fleet of sixty-eight ships — some accounts 
say ninety, including the whalers and transports gathered along 
the coast towns — sails into Gabarus Bay, behind Louisburg, 
where the waters have barely cleared of ice. William Pepper- 
rell, a merchant, commands the four thousand raw levies of 
provincial troops, the most of whom have never stepped to 
martial music before in their lives. Admiral Warren has come 
up from West India waters with his men-of-war to command 
the united fleets. Early Monday morning, against a shore wind, 
the boats are tacking to land, when the alarm bells begin ring- 
ing and ringing at Louisburg and a force of one hundred and fifty 
men dashes downshore for Flat Cove to prevent the landing. 
Pepperrell out-tricks the enemy by leaving only a few boats to 
make a feint of landing at the Cove, while he swings his main 
fleet inshore round a bend in the coast a mile away. Mere, with 
a prodigious rattling of lowered sails and anchor chains, the 
crews plunge over the rolling waves, pontooning a bridge of 
small boats ashore. By nightfall the most of the English have 
landed, and spies report the harbor of Louisburg alive with 
torches where the P'rench are sinking ships to obstruct the 
entrance and setting fire to fishing stages that might inter- 
fere with cannon aim. The next night, May i, Vaughan's New 
Hampshire boys — raw farmers, shambling in their gait, singing 
as they march — swing through the woods along the marsh 



THE SIEGE OF THE GREAT FORT 



217 



behind the fort, and take up a position on a hill to the far side of 
Louisburg, creating an enormous bonfire with the French tar 
and ships' tackling stored here. The result of this harmless 





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WILLIAM rEPPlCRRELL 



maneuver was simply astounding. It will be recalled that Louis- 
burg had an outer battery of forty cannon on this side. The 

y mistook the bonfire for the 



French soldiers holding this batter 



2i8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Eni^lish attacking forces, and under cover of darkness abandoned 
the position, — battery, guns, powder and all, — which the Eng- 
lish promptly seized. This was the Royal Battery, which com- 
manded the harbor and could shell into the very heart of the fort. 
The next thing for the English was to get their heavy guns 
ashore through a rolling surf of ice-cold water. For two weeks 
the men stood by turns to their necks in the surf, steadying the 
pontoon gangway as the great cannon were trundled ashore ; and 
this was the least of their difficulties. The question was how to 
get their cannon across the marsh behind the fort to the hill on 
the far side. The cannon would sink from their own weight in 
such a bog, and either horses or oxen would flounder to death 
in a few minutes. Again, the fool-hardy enthusiasm of the raw 
levies overcame the difficulty. They built large stone boats, 
raft-shaped, such as are used on farms to haul stones over ground 
too rough for wagons. Hitching to these, teams of two hundred 
men stripped to midwaist, they laboriously hauled the cannon 
across the c[uaking moss to the hills commanding the rear of the 
fort, bombs and balls whizzing overhead all the while, fired from 
the fort bastions. It was cold, damp spring weather. The men 
who were not soaked to their necks in surf and bog were doing 
picket duty alongshore, sleeping in their boots. Consequently, 
in three weeks, half Pepperrell's force became deadly ill. At this 
time, within two days, occurred both a cheering success and a dis- 
heartening rebuff. A French man-of-war with seventy cannon 
and six hundred men was seen entering Louisburg. As if in 
panic fright, one of the small English ships fled. The French 
ship pursued. In a trice she was surrounded by the English fleet 
and captured. The flight of the little vessel had been a trick. 
A few days later fom- hundred English in whaleboats attempted 
the mad project of attacking the Island Battery at the harbor 
entrance. The boats set out about midnight with muffled oars, 
but a Avind rose, setting a tremendous surf lashing the rocks, 
and yet the invaders might have succeeded but for a piece of 
rashness. A hundred men had gained the shore when, with 
the thoughtlessness of schoolboys, they uttered a jubilant yell. 



lOKES BANDIED BY FIGHTERS 



2 19 



Instantly, porthole, platform, gallery, belched death through the 
darkness. The story is told that a raw New England lad was in 
the act of climbing the French flagstaff to hang out his own 
red coat as English flag when a Swiss guard hacked him to 
pieces. The boats not yet ashore were sunk by the blaze of 
cannon. A few escaped back in the darkness, but by da}'light 
over one hundred English had been captured. Cannon, mortars, 
and musketoons were mounted to command the fort inside the 
walls, and a continuous rain of fire beiran from the hills. In vain 




RUINS OF THE FORTIFICATIONS AT LOUISRUKO 

Duchambon, the French commander, waited for reenforcements 
from Canada. Convent, hospital, barracks, all the houses of the 
town, were peppered by bombs till there was not a roof intact in 
the place. The soldiers, of whom there were barely two thousand, 
were ready to mutiny. The citizens besought Duchambon to 
surrender. Provisions ran out. Looking down from the tops of 
the walls, cracking jokes with the English across the ditch, the 
French soldiers counted more than a thousand scaling ladders 
ready for hand-to-hand assault, and a host of barrels filled with 
mud behind which the English sharpshooters crouched. It had 
just been arranged between Warren and Pepperrell that the 



220 CANADA: THE EMPIRP] OF THE NORTH 

former should attack by sea while the latter assaulted by land, 
when on June i6 the French capitulated. How the New Eng- 
land enthusiasts ran rampant through the abandoned French 
fort need not be told. How Parson Moody, famous for his long 
prayers, hewed down images in the Catholic chapel till he was 
breathless and then came to the officers ' state dinner so ex- 
hausted that when asked to pronounce blessing he could only 
mutter, " Good Lord, we have so much to thank Thee for, 
time is too short; we must leave it to eternity. Amen"; how 
the New Englanders, unused to French wines, drank themselves 
torpid on the stores of the fort cellar ; how the French the next 
year made superhuman effort to regain Louisburg, only to have 
a magnificent fleet of one hundred and fifty sail wrecked on 
Sable Island, Duke d'Anville, the commander, dying of heart- 
break on his ship anchored near Halifax, his successor killing 
himself with his own sword, — cannot be told here. Louisburg 
was the prize of the war, and England threw the prize away by 
giving it back to France in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. 
The English government paid back the colonies for their outlay, 
but of all the rich French pirate ships loaded with booty, cap- 
tured at Louisburg by leaving the French flag flying, not a 
penny's worth went to the provincial troops. Warren's seamen 
received all the loot. 

.' Like all preceding treaties, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle left 
unsettled the boundaries between New France and New Eng- 
land. In Acadia, in New York, on the Ohio, collisions were 
bound to come. 

In Acadia the English send their officers to the Isthmus of 
Chignecto to establish a fort near the bounds of what are now 
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The priestly spy, Louis 
Joseph Le Loutre, leads his wild Micmac savages through the 
farm settlement round the English fort, setting fire to houses, 
putting a torch even to the church, and so compelling the habit- 
ants of the boundary to come over to the French and take sides. 
The treaty has restored Louisburg to the French, but the very 



QUARRELS LEFT UNSETTLED 



22 1 



next year England sends out Edward Cornwallis with two thou- 
sand settlers to establish the English fort now known as Halifax. 
By 1752 there are four thousand people at the new fort, though 
the Indian raiders miss no occasion to shoot down way- 
farers and farmers ; and the French Governor at Quebec con- 
tinues his bribes — as much as eight hundred dollars a year to a 
man — to stir up hostility to the English and prevent the Acadian 




M "ti 




» 



li » 






CONTEMPORARY PLAN OF THE ATTACK ON LOUISBURG 

farmers taking the oath of fidelity to England. So much for the 
peace treaty in Acadia. It was not peace ; it was farce. 

In New York state matters were worse. The Iroquois had 
been acknowledged allies of the English, and before 1730 the 
English fort at Oswego had been built at the southeast corner 
of Lake Ontario to catch the fur trade of the northern tribes 
coming down the lakes to New France, and to hold the Iroquois' 
friendship. Also, as French traders pass up the lake to Fort 
Frontenac (Kingston) and Niagara with their national flag flying 
from the prow of canoe and flatboat, chance bullets from the 



222 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



English fort ricochet across the advancing prows, and soldiers 
on the galleries inside Fort Oswego take bets on whether they 
can hit the French flag. Prompt as a gamester, New France 
checkmates this move. Peter Schuyler has been settling Eng- 
lish farmers round Lake Champlain. At Crown Point, long 

known as Scalp Point, 
where the lake narrows 
and portage runs across 
to Lake George and the 
Mohawk land, the French 
in 1 73 1 erect a strong 
fort. As for the English 
traders at P'ort Oswego 






V '. » , t » '• 



\. 



FORT PRESENTATION 



catching the tribes from 
the north, New France 
counterchecks that by 
sending Portneuf in April 
of 1 749, only a year after 
the peace, to the Toronto 
portage where the Indians come from the Upper Lakes by way of 
Lake Simcoe. What is now known as Toronto is named Rouille, 
after a French minister ; and as if this were not checkmate enough 
to the English advancing westward, the Sulpician priest from 
Montreal, Abbe Picquet, zealously builds a fort straight north 
of Oswego, on the south side of the St. Lawrence, to keep the 
Iroquois loyal to France. Picquet calls his fort " Presentation." 
His enemies call it " Picquet's Folly." It is known to-day as 
Ogdensburg. Look at the map. France's frontier line is guarded 
by forts that stand like sentinels at the gateways of all waters 
leading to the interior, — Ogdensburg, Kingston, Toronto, Niagara, 
Detroit, Michilimackinac, and La Verendrye's string of forts far 
west as the Rockies. New York's frontier line is guarded by one 
fort only, — Oswego. Here too, as in Acadia, the peace is a farce. 
But it was in the valley of the Ohio where the greatest strug- 
gle over boundaries took place. One year after the peace, Celo- 
ron de Bienville is sent in July, 1749, to take possession of the 



BEYOND THE ALLEGHENIES 



223 



Ohio for France. France claims right to this region l^y virtue of 
La Salle's explorations sixty years previously, and of all those 
French bushrangers who have roved the wilds from the Great 
Lakes to Louisiana. Small token did France take of La Salle's 
exploits while he lived, but great store do her statesmen set by 
his voyages now that he has been sixty years dead. " But pause ! " 
commands the English Governor of Virginia. " Since time imme- 
morial have our traders wandered over the Great Smoky Moun- 
tains, over the Cumberlands, over the Alleghenies, down the 
Tennessee and the Kanawha and the Monongahela and the Ohio 
to the Mississippi. " As a matter of fact, one Major General 
Wood had in 1670 and 1674 sent his men overland, if not so far 
as the Mississippi, then certainly as far as the Ohio and the valley 
of the Mississippi. But Wood was a private adventurer. For 
years his exploit had been forgotten. No record of it remained 
but an account written by his men, Batts and Hallam. The 
French declared the record was a myth, and it has, in fact, been 




CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF OSWEGO 



so regarded by the most of historians. Yet, curiously enough, 
ranging through some old family papers of the Hudson's Bay 
Company in the Public Records, London, I found with Wood's 
own signature his record of the trip across the mountains to the 
Lidians of the Ohio and the Mississippi. It is probable that the 



224 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

English cared quite as much for claims founded on La Salle's 
voyage as the French cared for claims founded on the horseback 
trip of Major General Wood's men. The fact remained : here 
were the English traders from Virginia pressing northward by 
way of the Ohio ; here were the French adventurers pressing 
south by way of the Ohio. As in Acadia and New York, peace 
or no peace, a clash was inevitable. 

Duc|uesne has come out governor of Canada, and by 1753 has 
dispatched a thousand men into the Ohio valley, who blaze a 
trail through the wilderness and string a line of forts from Presqu' y 
Isle ( Erie ) on Lake Erie southward to Fort Duquesne at the 
junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela, where Pittsburg 
stands to-day. 

One December night at Fort Le Boeuf, on the trail to the Ohio, 
the French commandant was surprised to see a slim youth of 
twenty years ride out of the rain-drenched, leafless woods, followed 
by four or five whites and Lidians with a string of belled pack- 
horses. The young gentleman introduces himself with great for- 
mality, though he must use an interpreter, for he does not speak 
French. He is Major George Washington, sent by Governor 
Dinwiddle of Virginia to know why the French have been seizing 
the fur posts of English traders in this region. The French com- 
mander, Saint Pierre, receives the young Virginian courteously, 
plies master and men with such lavish hospitality that Washington 
has much trouble to keep his drunk Lidians from deserting, and 
dismisses his visitor with the smooth but bootless response that 
as France and England are at peace he cannot answer Governor 
Dinwiddle's message till he has heard from the Governor of Can- 
ada, Marquis Duquesne. Not much satisfaction for emissaries 
who had forded ice-rafted rivers and had tramped the drifted 
forests for three hundred miles. 

By January of 1754 Washington is back in Virginia. By May he 
is on the trail again, blazing a path through the wilderness down 
the Monongahela towards the French fort ; for what purpose 
one may guess, though these were times of piping peace. Come 



WASHINGTON AND JUMONVILLE 



225 



an old Indian chief and an English bushwhacker one morning 
with word that fifty French raiders are on the trail ten miles 
away ; for what purpose one may guess, spite of peace. Instantly 
Washington sends half a hundred Virginia frontiersmen out scout- 
ing. They find no trace of raiders, but the old chief picks up the 
trail of the ambushed French. Here they had broken branches 
going" through the woods; 
there a moccasin track 
punctures the spongy 
mold ; here leaves have 
been scattered to hide 
camp ashes. At mid- 
night, with the rain 
slashing through the for- 
est black as pitch, Wash- 
ington sets out with forty 
men, following his Indian 
guide. Through the dark 
they feel rather than fol- 
low the trail, and it is 
a slow but an easy trick 
to those acquainted with 
wild wood travel. Feave 
the path by as much as 
a foot length and the foli- 
age lashes you back, or the windfall trips you up, or the punky 
path becomes punctured beneath moccasin tread. By day dawn, 
misty and gray in the May woods, the English are at the Indian 
camp and march forward escorted by the redskms, single file, 
silent as ghosts, alert as tigers. Raindrip swashes on the buck- 
skin coats. Muskets are loaded and carefully cased from the wet. 
The old chief stops suddenly . . . and points ! There lie the 
French in a rock ravine sheltered by the woods like a cave. The 
next instant the French had leaped up with a whoop. Wash- 
ington shouted " Fire ! " When the smoke of the musket crash 
cleared, ten French lay dead, among them their officer, Jumonville ; 




GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE OF VIRGINIA 



226 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

and twenty-two others surrendered. No need to dispute whether 
Washington was justified in firing" on thirty bushrovers in time 
of peace ! The bushrovers had already seized Enghsh forts and 
were even now scouring the country for English traders. For a 
week their scouts had followed Washington as spies. 

Expecting instant retaliation from Fort Duquesne, Washington 
retreated swiftly to his camping place at Great Meadows and cast 
up a log barricade known as Fort Necessity. A few days later 
comes a company of regular troops. By July i he has some four 
hundred men, but at Fort Duquesne are fourteen hundred French. 
The French wait only for orders from Quebec, then march nine^ 
hundred bushrovers against Washington. July 3, towards mid- 
day, they burst from the woods whooping and yelling. Washing- 
ton chose to meet them on the open ground, but the French were 
pouring a cross fire over the meadow ; and to compel them to 
attack in the open, Washington drew his men behind the barri- 
cade. By nightfall the Virginians were out of powder. Twelve 
had been killed and forty-three were wounded. Before midnight 
the French beat a parley. All they desired was that the English 
evacuate the fort. To fight longer would have risked the exter- 
mination of Washington's troops. Terms of honorable surrender 
were granted, and the next day — the day which Washington was 
to make immortal, July 4 — the English retreated from Fort 
Necessity. Such was the peace in the Ohio valley. 

Though the peace is still continued, England dispatches in 
1755 two regiments of the line under Major General Braddock to 
protect Virginia, along with a fleet of twelve men-of-war under 
Admiral Boscawen. France keeps up the farce by sending out 
Baron Dieskau with three thousand soldiers and Admiral La Motte 
with eighteen ships. Coasting off Newfoundland, the English 
encounter three of the French ships that have gone astray in 
the fog. " Is it peace or war ? "' shout the French across decks. 
" Peace," answers a voice from the English deck ; and instan- 
taneously a hurricane cannonade rakes the decks of the French, 
killing eighty. Two of the French ships surrendered. The other 
escaped through the fog. Such was the peace ! 



BRADDOCK'S MARCH 



227 



So began the famous Seven Years' War ; and Major General 
Braddock, in session with the colonial governors, plans the cam- 
paign that is to crush New France's pretensions south of the 
Great Lakes. Acadia, Lake Champlain, the Ohio, — these are to 
be the theaters of the 
contest. 

Braddock himself, ac- 
companied by Wash- 
ington, marches with 
twenty-two hundred men 
over the Alleghenies 
along the old trail of the 
Monongahela against 
Fort Duquesne. Of 
Braddock, the least said 
the better. A gambler, 
full of arrogant contempt 
towards all people and 
things that were not Brit- 
ish, hail-fellow-well-met 
to his boon companions, 
heartless towards all out- 
side the pale of his own 
pride, a blustering bully 
yet dogged, and withal 
a gentleman after the 
standard of the age, he 
was neither better nor 
worse than the times in 
which he lived. Of Brad- 
dock's men, fifteen hundred were British regulars, the rest Vir- 
ginian bushfighters ; and the redcoat troops held such contempt 
towards the buckskin frontiersmen that friction arose from the 
first about the relative rank of regulars and provincials. From 
the time they set out, the troops had been retarded by countless 
delays. There was trouble buying up supplies of beef cattle 



/-:. v,.,'> /:,/.,, 


T H E 


j u R N A t; 

F 


•J J •* 


S F. N T B y T H E 


\{oxx. ROBERT DINM'-IDDIE, Efq; 
tlis Majcrty's Licutenant-Go\'urnor, and 
ComnnuidcV ia Chief of FIR G I N I A^ 


TO THE 


C iM M A N D A N T 


OF THE 


FRENCH FORCES 


N 

OHIO. 


To W ...CH ,.. *DCHO. T„. 


G V E R N R's L E T T E R, 


And a T R A N S L A T I N or the 


Fkinch officer's A N S W E Ri 


WILLIAMSBURG'. 


Printed by W i L L I A M ) I U N T E R. 17^41 



TITLE-PAGE OF WASHINGTON S JOURNAL 



2 28 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

among the frontiersmen. Scouts scoured the country for horses 
and wagons to haul the great guns and heavy artillery. Brad- 
dock's high mightiness would take no advice from colonials about 
single-file march on a bush trail and swift raids to elude am- 
bushed foes. Everything proceeded slowly, ponderously, with the 
system and routine of an English guardroom. Scouts to the fore 
and on both flanks, three hundred bushwhackers went ahead 
widening the bridle path to a twelve-foot road for the wagons ; 
and along this road moved the troops, five and six abreast, the 
red coats agleam through the forest foliage, drums rolling, flags 
flying, steps keeping time as if on parade, Braddock and his 
ofificcrs mounted on spirited horses, the heavy artillery and sup- 
ply wagons lagging far behind in a winding line. 

What happened has been told times without number in story 
and history. It was what the despised colonials feared and any 
bushranger could have predicted. July 9, in stifling heat, the 
marchers had come to a loop in the Monongahela River. Brad- 
dock thought to avoid the loop by fording twice. He was now 
within eight miles of Fort Duquesne — the modern Pittsburg. 
Though Indian raiders had scalped some wanderers from the trail 
and insolent messages had been occasionally found scrawled in 
French on birch trees, not a Frenchman had been seen on the 
march. The advance guard had crossed the second ford about 
midday when the road makers at a little opening beyond the river 
saw a white man clothed in buckskin, but wearing an officer's 
badge, dash out of the woods to the fore, wave his hat, . . . and 
disappear. A moment later the well-known war whoop of the 
French bushrovers tore the air to tatters ; and bullets rained from 
ambushed foes in a sheet of fire. In vain the English drums 
rolled . . . and rolled . . . and soldiers shouted, " The King ! 
God save the King ! " One officer tried to rally his men to rush 
the woods, but they were shot down by a torrent of bullets from 
an unseen foe. The Virginian bushfighters alone knew how to 
meet such an emergency. Jumping from tree to tree for shelter 
like Indians dancing sideways to avoid the enemy's aim, they had 
broken from rank to fight in bushman fashion when Braddock 



DEFEAT OF BRADDOCK 



229 



came galloping furiously from the rear and ordered them back in 
line. What use was military rank with an invisible foe ? As well 
shoot air as an unseen Indian ! Again the Virginians broke rank, 
and the regulars, huddled together like cattle in the shambles, 
fired blindly and succeeded only in hitting their own provincial 
troops. Braddock stormed and swore and rode like a fury incar- 
nate, roaring orders which no one could hear, much less obey. 
Five horses were shot under him and the dauntless commander 



■S,i44^^,'U/^^, ■ 

V. t:'.:i'j^tr^^^ ^ ,;.- - 







A SKETCH OF THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT BRADDOCK S DEFEAT 

had mounted a fresh one when the big guns came plunging for- 
ward ; but the artillery on which Braddock had pinned his faith 
only plowed pits in the forest mold. Of eighty officers, sixty 
had fallen and a like proportion of men. Braddock ordered a 
retreat. The march became a panic, the panic frenzied terror, the 
men who had stood so stolidly under withering fire now dashing 
in headlong flight from the second to the first ford and back over 
the trail, breathless as if pursued by demons ! Artillery, cattle, 
supplies, dispatch boxes, — all were abandoned. Washington's 
clothes had been riddled by bullets, but he had escaped injury. 
Braddock reeled from his horse mortally wounded, to be carried 



!30 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 









^' 



back on a litter to that scene of Washington's surrender the year 
before. Four clays later the P^nglish general died there. Of the 
English troops, more than a thousand lay dead, blistering in the 
July sun, maimed and scalped by the Indians. Braddock was 
buried in his soldier's coat beside the trail, all signs of the grave 

effaced to prevent van- 
dalism. 

Of all the losses the 
most serious were the 
dispatch boxes ; for they 
contained the English 
plans of campaign from 
Acadia to Niagara, and 
were carried back to Fort 
Duquesne, where they 
put the French on guard. 
The jubilant joy at the 
French fort need not be 
described. When he 
heard of the English ad- 
vance, Contrecoeur, the 
commander, had been 
cooped up with less than 
one thousand men, half 
of whom were Indians. 
Had Braddock once 
reached Fort Duquesne, 
he could have starved it 
into surrender without firing a gun, or shelled it into kindling 
wood with his heavy artillery. Bcaujeu, an officer under Contre- 
coeur, had volunteered to go out and meet the English. " My son, 
my son, will )'0u walk into the arms of death } " demanded the 
Indian chiefs. "My fathers, will you allow me to go alone.''" 
answered Beaujeu ; and out he sallied with six hundred picked 
men. It was Beaujeu whom Braddock's men had seen dash out 
and wave his hat. The brave Frenchman fell, shot at the first 



.,„-,Vrr'r ^ 



PL.AN OF FORT BEAUSEJOL'R 



ABB^ LE LOUTRE 23 1 

volley from the English, and his Indian friends avenged his death 
by roasting thirty English prisoners alive. 

The Isthmus of Chignecto, or the boundary between New 
Brunswick and Nova Scotia, was the scene of the border-land 
fights in Acadia. To narrate half the forays, raids, and ambus- 
cades would recjuire a volume. Eights as gallant as Bollard's 
at the Sault waged from Beausejour, the Erench fort north of 
the boundary, to Grand Pre and Annapolis, where the English 
were stationed. After the founding of Halifax the Abbe Le 
Loutre, whose false, foolish counsels had so often endangered 
the habitant farmer, moved from his mission in the center of 
Acadia up to Beausejour on the New Brunswick side. Here he 
could be seen with his Indians toiling like a demon over the 
trenches, when Monckton, the English general, came on June 
I, 1855, with the British fleet, to land his forces at Fort Lawrence, 
the English post on the south side. Colonel Lawrence was now 
English governor of Acadia, and he had decided with Monckton 
that once and for all the French of Acadia must be subju- 
gated. The French of Beausejour had in all less than fifteen 
hundred men, half of whom were simple Acadian farmers forced 
into unwilling service by the priest's threats of Indian raid in 
this world and damnation in the next. Day dawn of June 4 
the bugles blew to arms and the English forces, some four thou- 
sand, had marched to the south shore of the Missaguash River, 
when the Erench on the north side uttered a whoop and emitted 
a clatter of shots. Black-hatted, sinister, tireless, the priest could 
be seen urging his Indians on. The English brought up three 
field cannon and under protection of their scattering fire laid a 
pontoon bridge. Crossing the river, they marched within a mile 
of the fort. That night the sky was alight with flame ; for Vergor, 
the French commander, and Abbe Le Loutre set fire to all houses 
outside the fort walls. In a few days the English cannon had 
been placed in a circle round the fort, and set such strange music 
humming in the ears of the besieged that the Acadian farmers 
deserted and the priest nervously thought of flight. Louisburg 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



could send no aid, and still the bombs kept bursting through the 
roofs of the fort houses. One morning" a bomb crashed through 
the roof of the breakfast room, killing six officers on the spot ; and 
the French at once hung out the white flag; but when the English 
troops marched in on June i6, at seven in the evening, Le Loutre 
lind fled ()\-erlnnd tlii-()ni:(h the forests of New Brunswick for Quebec. 

There scant welcome awaited 



the renegade priest. The 
French governors had been 
willing to use him as their tool 
at a jnice ($800 a year), but 
when the tool failed of its pur- 
pose they cast him aside. Le 
Loutre sailed for France, but 
his ship was captured by an 
English cruiser and he was im- 
prisoned for eight years on the 
island of Jersey. 

Meanwhile, how was fate 
dealing with the Acadian farm- 
ers .? Ever since the Treaty of 
Utrecht they had been afraid 
to take the oath of unqualified 
loyalty to England, lest New 
France, or rather Abbe Le 
Loutre, let loose the hounds of Indian massacre on their peaceful 
settlements. Besides, had not the priest assured them year in and 
year out that France would recover Acadia and put to the sword 
those habitants who had forsworn F" ranee .? And they had been 
equally afraid to side with the French, for in case of failure the 
burden of punishment would fall on them alone. For almost half 
a century they had been known as Neutrals. Of their population 
of 12,000, 3000 had been lured away to Prince l{dward Island 
and Cape Breton. When Cornwallis had founded Halifax he had 
intended to wait only till the English were firmly established, 
when he would demand an oath of unqualified allegiance from 




GENERAL MONCKTON 



THE ACADIANS 233 

the Acadians. They, on their part, were willing to take the oath 
with one proviso, — ■ that they should never be required to take 
up arms against the French ; or they would have been willing to 
leave Acadia, as the Treaty of Utrecht had provided, in case they 
did not take the oath of allegiance. But in the early days of 
English possession the English governors were not willing they 
should leave. If the Acadians had migrated, it would simply have 
strengthened the French in Cape Breton and Prince Edward 
Island and New Brunswick. Obstructions had been created that 
prevented' the supply of transports to move the Acadians. The 
years had drifted on, and a new generation had grown up, know- 
ing nothing of treaty rights, but only that the French were 
threatening them on one side if they did not rise against Eng- 
land, and the English on the other side if they did not take oath 
of unqualified allegiance. Cornwallis had long since left Halifax, 
and Lawrence, the English governor, while loyal to a fault, was, like 
Braddock, that type of English understrapper who has wrought 
such irreparable injury to English prestige purely from lack of 
sympathetic insight with colonial conditions. For years before 
he had become governor, Lawrence's days had been embittered by 
the intrigues of the French with the Acadian farmers. He had 
been in Halifax when the Abbe Le Loutre's Indian brigands 
had raided and slain as many as thirty workmen at a time near 
the English fort. He had been at the Isthmus of Chignecto that 
fatal morning when some Indians dressed in the suits of French 
officers waved a white flag and lured Captain Howe of the Eng- 
lish fort across stream, where they shot him under flag of truce 
in cold blood. 

These are not excuses for what Lawrence did. Nothing can 
excuse the infamy of his policy toward the Acadians. There are 
few blacker crimes in the history of the world ; but these facts 
explain how a man of Lawrence's standing could assume the 
responsibility he did. In addition, Lawrence was a bigoted Prot- 
estant. He not only hated the Acadians because they were 
French; he hated them as "a colony of rattlesnakes" because 
they were Catholics ; and being an Englishman, he despised them 



'34 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



because they were colonials. France and England were now on 
the verge of the great struggle for supremacy in America. Eight- 
een French frigates had come to Louisburg and three thousand 
French regulars to Quebec. If Lawrence did not yet l<now that 
Braddock had been defeated on July 9 at Duquesne, — as his 
friends declare in his defense, — it is a strange thing ; for by 
August the bloody slaughter of the Monongahela was known every- 
where else in America 
from Quebec to New 
Spain. With Lawrence 
and Mo nekton and 
Murray and Boscawen 
and the other English 
generals sent to conduct 
the campaign in Acadia, 
the question was what 
to do with the French 
habitants. Let two facts 
be distinctly stated here 
and with great empha- 
sis : first, the colonial 
officers, like Winslow 
from Massachusetts, 
knew absolutely nothing 
of the English officers' 
plans ; they were not 
admitted to the conferences of the English officers and were sim- 
ply expected to obey orders ; second, the English government 
knew absolutely nothing of the English officers' course till it was 
too late for remedy. In fact, later dispatches of that year inquire 
sharply what Lawrence meant by an obscure threat to drive the 
Acadians out of the country. 

Did a darker and more sinister motive underlie the policy of 
Lawrence and his friends ? Poems, novels, histories have waged 
war of words over this. Only the facts can be stated. Land to 
the extent of twenty thousand acres each, which had belonged to 




GENERAL JOHN WINSLOW 



DEPORTATION OF FRENCH 



235 



the Acadians, was ultimately deeded to Lawrence and his friends. 
Charges of corruption against Lawrence himself were lodged 
with the British government both by mail and by personal dele- 
gates from Halifax. Unfortunately Lawrence died in Halifax in 
1 760 before the investigation could take place ; and whether 
true or false, the odium of the charges rests upon his fame. 

What he did with the Acadians is too well known to require 
telling. In secret conclave the infamous edict was pronounced. 
Quickly messengers were sent with secret dispatches to the 
officers of land forces and ships at Annapolis, at Mines, at Chig- 
necto, to repair to the towns of the Acadians, where, upon open- 
ing their dispatches, they would find their orders, which were to be 
kept a secret among the officers. The colonial officers, on reading 
the orders, were simply astounded. " It is the most grievous affair 
that ever I was in, in my life, " declared Winslow. The edict 
was that every man, woman, and child of the Acadians should 
be forcibly deported, in Lawrence's words, "in such a way as to 
prevent the reunion of the colonists." The men of the Acadian 
settlements were summoned to the churches to hear the will of 
the King of England. Once inside, doors were locked, English 
soldiers placed on guard with leveled bayonet, and the edict read 
by an officer standing on the pulpit stairs or on a table. The 
Acadians were snared like rats in a trap. Outside were their fami- 
lies, hostages for the peaceable conduct of the men. Inside were 
the brothers and husbands, hostages for the good conduct of the 
families outside. Only in a few places was there any rioting, and 
this was probably caused by the brutality of the officers. Murray 
and Monckton and Lawrence refer to their prisoners as " Popish 
recusants," "poor wretches," "rascals who have been bad subjects." 
While the Acadians were to be deported so they could never re- 
unite as a colony, it was intended to keep the families together 
and allow them to take on board what money and household 
goods they possessed ; but there were interminable delays for 
transports and supplies. From September to December the de- 
portation dragged on, and when the Acadians, patient as sheep at 
the .shambles, became restless, some of the ships were sent off 



236 CANADA: THE EMriRE Of^ THE NORTH 

with the men, while the famiUes were still on land. In places the 
men were allowed ashore to harvest their crops and care for their 
stock ; but harvest and stock fell to the victors as burning hay- 
ricks and barns nightly lighted to flame the wooded background 
and placid seas of the fair Acadian land. Before winter set in, 
the Acadians had been scattered from New England to Louisiana. 
A few people in the Chignccto region had escaped to the woods 
of New Brunswick, and one shipload overpowered its officers 
and fled to St. John River ; but in all, si.\ thousand six hundred 
people were deported. 

It is the blackest crime that ever took place under the British 
flag, and the expulsion was only the beginning of the sufferers' 
woes. Some people found their way to Quebec, but Quebec was 
destitute and in the throes of war. The wanderers came to actual 
starvation. The others wandered homeless in Boston, in New 
York, in Philadelphia, in Louisiana. After the peace of 1763 
some eight hundred gathered together in Boston and began the 
long march overland through the forests of Maine and New Bruns- 
wick, to return to Acadia. Singing hymns, dragging their baggage 
on sleighs, pausing to hunt by the way, these sad pilgrims toiled 
more than one thousand miles through forest and swamp, and at 
the end of two years found themselves back in Acadia. But they 
were like ghosts of the dead revisiting scenes of childhood ! 
Their lands were occupied by new owners. Of their herds 
naught remained but the bleaching bone heaps where the 
lowing cattle had huddled in winter storms. New faces filled 
their old houses. Strange children rambled beneath the little 
dormer windows of the Acadian cottages, and the voices of the 
boys at play in the apple orchards shouted in an alien tongue. 
The very names of the places had vanished. Beausejour was now 
Cumberland. Beaubassin had become Amherst. Cobequid was 
now Truro. Grand Pre was now known as Horton. The heart- 
broken people hurried on like ghosts to the unoccupied lands of 
St. Mary's Bay,- — -St. Mary's Bay, where long ago Priest Aubry 
had been lost. Here they settled, to hew out for themselves a 
second home in the wilderness. 



AT LAKE CHAMPLAIN 



237 



It will be recalled that Braddock's plans had been captured 
by the French, and those plans told Baron Dieskau, who had 
come out to command the French troops, that the English under 
William Johnson, a great leader of the Iroquois, inured to bush 
life like an Indian, were to attack the French fort at Crown Point 
on Lake Champlain. Now observe : on the Ohio, Braddock the 
regular had been defeated ; in Acadia, Lawrence and Monckton 
and Murray, the English generals, had brought infamy across Eng- 
land's renown by their failure to understand colonial conditions. 



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A( vniE 

ILES AD-JACEMTES 


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MAP OF ACADIA AND THE ADJACENT ISLANDS, 1755 

At Lake Champlain the conditions are reversed. Johnson, the 
English leader, is, from long residence in America, almost a colo- 
nial. Dieskau, the commander of the French, is a veteran of 
Saxon wars, but knows nothing of bushfighting. What happens ? 
Dieskau had intended to attack the English at Oswego, but the 
plans for Johnson on Lake Champlain brought the commander of 
the French rushing up the Richelieu River with three thousand 
soldiers, part regulars, part Canadians. Crown Point — called Fort 
Frederick by the French — was reached in August. No English 
are here, but scouts bring word that Johnson has built a fort on 
the south end of Lake George, and, leaving only five hundred 
men to garrison it, is moving up the lake with his main troops. 



238 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Fired by the French victories over Braddock, Dieskau planned 
to capture the English fort and ambush Johnson on the march. 
Look at the map ! The south end of Lake Champlain lies parallel 
with the north end of Lake George. The French can advance 
on the English one of two ways, — portage over to Lake George 
and canoe up the lake to Johnson's fort, or ascend the marsh to 
the south of Lake Champlain, then cross through the woods to 

Johnson's fort. Dieskau 
chose the latter trail. 
Leaving half his men to 
guard the baggage, 
Dieskau bade fifteen 
hundred picked men 
follow him on swiftest 
march with provisions 
in haversack for only 
eight days. September 
8, lo A.M., the marchers 
advance through the 
woods on Johnson's fort, 
when suddenly they 
learn that their scout has 
lied, — Johnson himself 
is still at the fort. In- 
stead of five hundred are 
four thousand English. 
Advancing along the 
trail V-shape, regulars in 
the middle, Canadians and Lidians on each side, the French come 
on a company of five hundred English wagoners. l\\ the wild 
melee of shouts the English retreat in a rabble. " Pursue ! 
March ! Fire ! Force the place ! " yells Dieskau, dashing forward 
sword in hand, thinking to follow so closely on the heels of the 
rabble that he can enter the English fort before the enemy know; 
but his Indians have forsaken him, and Johnson's scouts have 
forewarned the approach of the French. Instead of ambushing 




SIR W II. I, I AM JOHNSON 



DIESKAU DEFEATED 



239 



the English, Dieskau finds his own army ambushed. He had 
sneered at the un-uniformed plowboys of the English. "The 
more there are, the more we shall kill," he had boasted ; but 
now he discovers that the rude bushwhackers, " who fought like 
boys in the morning, at noon fought like men, and by afternoon 
fought like devils." 
Their sharpshooters 
kept up a crash of fire 
to the fore, and fifteen 
hundred doubled on the 
rear of his army, " fold- 
ing us up," he reported, 
"like a pack of cards." 
Dieskau fell, shot in the 
leg and in the knee, and 
a bullet struck the cart- 
ridge box of the servant 
who was washing out 
the wounds. 

" Lay my telescope 
and coat by me, and go ! " 
ordered Dieskau. "This 
is as good a deathbed as 
any place. Go ! " he thun- 
dered, seeing his second 
officer hesitate. " Don't 
you see you are needed ? 
Go and sound a retreat." 

A third shot pene- 
trated the wounded com- 
mander's bladder. L}ing alone, propped against a tree, he heard 
the drums rolling a retreat, when one of the enemy jumped from 
the woods with pointed pistol. 

" Scoundrel !" roared the dauntless Dieskau; "dare to shoot 
a man weltering in his blood." The fellow proved to be a French- 
man who had long ago deserted to the English, and he muttered 




CONTEMPORARY M.IP OF THE REGION OF 
LAKE GEORGE 



240 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

out some excuse about shooting the devil before the devil shot 
him ; but when he found out who Dieskau was, he had him carried 
carefully to Johnson's tent, where every courtesy was bestowed 
upon the wounded commander. Johnson himself lay wounded. 

All that night Irocjuois kept breaking past the guard into 
the tent. 

''What do they want ? " asked Dieskau feebly. 

"To skin you and eat you," returned Johnson laconically. 

Whose was the victory .'' The losses had been about even, — 
two hundred and fifty on each side. Johnson had failed to 
advance to Crown Point, but Dieskau had failed to dislodge 
Johnson. If Dieskau had not been captured, it is a question if 
either side would have considered the fight a victory. As it was. 
New France was plunged in grief ; joy bells rang in New Eng- 
land. Johnson was given a baronetcy and ^5000 for his vic- 
tory. He had named the lake south of Lake Champlain after 
the English King, Lake George. 

So closed the first act in the tragic struggle for supremacy in 
America. 



CHAPTER XII 
FROM 1756 TO 1TG3 

How stand both sides at the opening of the year 1756, on the 
verge of the Seven Years' War, — the struggle for a continent ? 

There has been open war for more than a year, but war is not 
formally declared till May 18, 1756. 

Take Acadia first. 

The French have been expelled. The infamous Le Loutre is 
still in prison in England, and when he is released, in 1763, he 
toils till his death, in 1773, trying to settle the Acadian refugees 
on some of the French islands of the English Channel. The smil- 
ing farms of Grand Pre and Port Royal lie a howling waste. 
Only a small English garrison holds Annapolis, where long ago 
Marc L'Escarbot and Champlain held happy revel ; and the seat 
of government has been transferred to Halifax, now a settlement 
and fort of some five thousand people. So much for the English. 
Across a narrow arm of the sea is Isle Royal or Cape Breton, 
where the French are intrenched as at a second Gibraltar in the 
fortress of Louisburg. Since the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle re- 
stored the fort to the French, millions have been spent strength- 
ening its walls, adding to the armaments ; but Intendant Bigot 
has had charge of the funds, and Intendant Bigot has a sponge- 
like quality of absorbing all funds that flow through his hands. 
Cannon have been added, but there are not enough balls to go 
round. The walls have been repaired, but with false filling (sand 
in place of mortar), so that the first shatter of artillery will send 
them clattering down in wet plaster. 

Take the Ohio next. 

" Beautiful River " is the highway between New France and 
Louisiana. By Braddock's defeat the English have been driven 
out to a man. Matters are a thousandfold worse than before, for 

241 



242 CANADA : THR EMIMRI': OF THE NORTH 

the savage allies of the French now swarm clown the bush road 
cut by Braddock's army and carry bloody havoc to all the fron- 
tier settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia. How many pio- 
neers perished in this border war will never be known. It is a 
tale by itself, and its story is not part of Canada's history. 
George Washington was the officer in charge of a thousand bush- 
fighters to guard this frontier. 

Take the valley of Lake Champlain. 

This is the highway of approach to Montreal north, to Albany 
south. Johnson had defeated Dieskau here, but neither side was 
strong enough to advance from the scene of battle into the 
territory of the enemy. The English take possession of Lake 
George and intrench themselves at the south end in Fort 
William Henry. Sir William Johnson strings a line of forts up 
the Mohawk River towards Oswego on Lake Ontario, and he 
keeps his forest rangers, under the famous scout Major Robert 
Rogers, scouring the forest and mountain trails of Lake Cham- 
plain for French marauder and news of what the French are 
doing. Rogers' Rangers, too, are a story by themselves, but a 
story which does not concern Canada. Skating and snowshoe- 
ing by winter, canoeing by night in summer, Rogers passed and 
repassed the enemy's lines times without number, as if his life 
were charmed, though once his wrist was shot when he had 
nothing t() stanch the blood but the ribbon tying his wig, and 
once he stumbled back exhausted to Fort William Henry, to lie 
raging with smallpox for the winter. Among the forest rangers 
of New Hampshire and New York, Major Robert Rogers was 
without a i^eer. No danger was too great, no feat too daring, for 
his band of scouts. The PZnglish have established Fort William 
Henry at the south end of Lake George. The P^rench check- 
mate the move by strengthening Crown Point on Lake Cham- 
plain and moving a pace farther south into English territory, — to 
Carillon, where the waters of Lake George pour into Champlain. 
Here on a high angle between the river and the lake, command- 
ing all travel north and south, the French build Carillon or Fort 
Ticonderoo-a. 



BIGOT AT QUEBEC 



243 



As for the Great Northwest, New France with her string of 
posts — Frontenac, Niagara, Detroit, Michihmackinac, Kaminis- 
tiquia (Fort Wilhain), Fort Rogue (Winnipeg), Portage la Prairie 
— stretches clear across to the foothills of the Rockies. The 
English fur traders of Hudson Bay have, in 1754, sent Anthony 
Hendry up the Saskatchewan, but when Hendry comes back 
with word of equestrian Indians — the Blackfeet on horseback — 
and treeless plains, the English set him down as a lying impostor. 
Indians on horseback ! They had never seen Indians but in canoes 
and on snowshoes ! Hendry was dismissed as unreliable, and 
no Englishman went up the Saskatchewan for another ten years. 

If the disasters of 1755 did nothing more, they at last stirred 
the home governments to action. Earl Loudon is sent out in 
1756 to command the English, and to New France in May comes 
Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, age forty-four, soldier, 
scholar, country gentleman, with a staff composed of Chevalier 
tie Levis, Bourlamaque, and one Bougainville, to become famous 
as a navigator. 

Though New F'rance consists of a good three quarters of 
America, things are in e\il plight that causes Montcalm many 
sleepless nights. Vaudreuil, the French governor, descendant of 
that Vaudreuil who long ago set the curse of Indian warfare 
on the borders of New England, had expected to be appointed 
chief commander of the troops and jealously resents Montcalm's 
coming. With the Governor is leagued Intendant Bigot, come up 
from Louisburg. Bigot is a man of sixty, of noble birth, a favor- 
ite of the butterfly woman who rules the King of PYance, — 
the Pompadour, — and he has come to New France to mend his 
fortunes. How he planned to do it one may guess from his 
career at Louisburg; but Quebec offered better field, and it 
was to Bigot's interest to ply Montcalm and Vaudreuil with such 
tittle-tattle of enmity as would foment jealousy, keep their atten- 
tion on each other, and their eyes off his own doings. As he had 
done at Louisburg, so he now did at Quebec. The King was 
requisitioned for enormous sums to strengthen the fort. Bigot's 



244 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

ring of friends acted as contractors. The outlay was enormous, 
the results trifling. "I think," complained the King, "that 
Quebec must be fortified in gold, it has cost so much." It was 
time of war. Enormous sums were to be expended for presents 
to keep the Indians loyal ; and the King complains that he can- 
not understand how baubles of beads and powderhorns cost so 
much, or how the western tribes seem to become more and more 
numerous, or how the French officers, who distribute the pres- 
ents, become millionaires in a few years. A friend of Bigot's 
handled these funds. There are meat contracts for the army. 
A worthless, lowbred scamp is named commissary general. He 
handles these contracts, and he, too, swiftly graduates into the 
millionaire class, is hail-fellow well met with Bigot, drinks deep 
at the Intendant's table, and gambles away as much as $40,000 
in a single night. It is time of war, and it is time of famine too ; 
for the crops have failed. Every inhabitant between the ages of 
fifteen and fifty has been drafted into the army. Not counting 
Indians, there is an army of fifteen to twenty thousand to be fed ; 
so Bigot compels the habitants to sell him provisions at a low 
price. These provisions he resells to the King for the army and 
to the citizens at famine prices. The King's warehouse down 
by the Intendant's palace becomes known as La Friponne, — 
The Cheat. 

And though the country is on verge of ruin, though poor peo- 
ple of the three towns are rioting in the streets for food, old 
women cursing the little wizened Intendant with his pimpled face 
as he rolls past resplendent in carriage with horses whose har- 
ness is a blaze of silver, the troops threatening to mutiny because 
they are compelled to use horse flesh, — though New France is 
hovering over a volcano of disaster, they dance to their death, 
thoughtless as butterflies, gay as children, these manikin imita- 
tors of the French court, who are ruining New France that they 
may copy the vices of an Old World playing at kingcraft. The 
regular troops are uniformed in white with facings of blue and 
red and gold and violet, three-cornered hat, and leather leggings 
to knee. What with chapel bells ringing and ringing, and bugle 



NEW FRANCE ON VERGE OF RUIN 



!45 



call and counter call echoing back from Cape Diamond ; what 
with Monsieur Bigot's prancing horses and Madame Pean's flashy 
carriage, — Madame Pean of whom Bigot is so enamored he has 
sent her husband to some far western post and passes each even- 
ing at her gay receptions, — what with the grounding of the 
sentry's arms and the parade of troops, Quebec is a gay place 
these years of black ruin, and the gossips have all they can do to 
keep track of the amours and the duels and the high personages 
cultivating Madame Pean ; for cultivated she must be by all who 




RUINS OF CHATEAU BIGOT 



covet place or power. A word from Madame Pean to Bigot 
is of more value than a bribe. Even Montcalm and De Levis 
attend her revels. 

Twenty people sup with Monsieur Bigot each night, either at 
the Intendant's palace down by Charles River, or nine miles out 
towards Beauport, where he has built himself the Forest Hermit- 
age, now known as Chateau Bigot, — a magnificent country 
manor house of red brick, hidden away among the hills with the 
gay shrubberies of French gardens set down in an American wil- 
derness. Supper over by seven, the guests sit down to play, and 
the amount a man may gamble is his social barometer, whether 



246 CANADA : 'IHK EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

he lose or win, cheat or steal. If dancing follows gambling, the 
rout will not disperse till seven in the morning. What time is left 
of the twenty-four hours in a day will be devoted to public affairs. 

Montcalm's salary is only 25,000 francs, or $5000. To main- 
tain the dignity of the King, the commander in chief must keep 
the pace, and he too gives weekly suppers, with places set for 
forty people, "whom I don't know," he writes dejectedly to his 
wife, "and don't want to know ; and wish that I might spend the 
evenings quietly in my own chamber." To Montcalm, who was 
of noble birth with no shamming, this lowbred pretense and play 
at courtcraft became a bore ; to his staff of officers, a source of 
continual amusement ; but De Levis presently falls victim to a 
pair of fine eyes possessed by the wife of another man. 

War filled the summers, but the winters were given up to 
social life ; and of all midwinter social gayeties the most impor- 
tant was the official visit of the Governor and the Intendant to 
Montreal. B)' this time a good road had been cut from Quebec 
to Montreal along the north shore, and the sleighs usually set 
out in January or February. Bigot added to the occasion all the 
prestige of a social rout. All the grand dames and cavaliers of 
Quebec were invited. Baggage was sent on ahead with servants 
to break the way, find quarters for the night, and prepare meals. 
After a dinner at the Intendant's palace the sleighs set out, two 
horses to each, driven tandem because the sleigh road was too 
narrow for a team. Each sleigh held only two occupants, and to 
the damage done b)' fair eyes was added the glow of exhilaration 
from driving behind spirited horses in frosty air with the bells of 
a hundred carryalls ringing across the snow. At seven was pause 
for supper. High play followed till ten. Then early to bed and 
early to rise and on the road again by seven in the morning ! In 
Montreal was one continual round of dinners and dances. Be- 
tween times, appointments were made to the military posts and 
trading stations of the Up-Country. He who wanted a good post 
must pay his court to Madame Pean. No wonder Montcalm 
breathed a sigh of relief when Lent put a stop to the gayeties 
and he could quietly pass his evenings with the Sulpician priests. 




PARLIAMKNT BUILDINGS, OTTAWA 




QUEBEC, CHATEAU FRONTENAC AND THE CITADEL 



BIGOT'S VAMPIRES SUCK COUNTRY'S LIFEBLOOD 247 

To break from Bigot's ring during the war was impossible. Crea- 
tures of his choosing filled the army, handled the supplies, con- 
trolled the Indians ; and when the King's reproof became too 
sharp, Bigot simply threatened to resign, which wrought conster- 
nation, for no man of ability would attempt to unwind the tangle 
of Bigot's dishonesty during a critical war. Montcalm wrote 
home complaints in cipher. The French government bided its 
time, and Bigot tightened his vampire suckers on the lifeblood 
of the dying nation. The whole era is a theme for the allegory 
of artist or poet. 

Montcalm had arrived in May of 1756. By midsummer he 
was leading three thousand French artillerymen across Lake 
Ontario from Fort Frontenac (Kingston), to attack the Eng- 
lish post on the south side, Oswego. Inside the fort walls were 
seven hundred raw English provincials, ill of scurvy from lack of 
food. The result need scarcely be told. Seven hundred ill men 
behind wooden walls had no chance against three thousand sol- 
diers in health with heavy artillery. To take the English by sur- 
prise, Montcalm had crossed the lake on August 4 by night. 
Two days later all the transport ships had landed the troops and 
the cannon had actually been mounted before the English knew of 
the enemy's presence. On the east side of the river was Fort 
Ontario, a barricade of logs built in the shape of a star, hous- 
ing an outguard of three hundred and seventy men. On discov- 
ering the French, the sentry spiked their cannon, threw their 
powder in the river, and retired at midnight inside Oswego's 
walls. Working like beavers, Montcalm's men dragged twenty 
cannon to a hill commanding the fort, known as " Fort Rascal " 
because the outfort there was useless to the English. Before 
Montcalm's cannonade Oswego's walls, plastered with clay and 
rubble, fell like the staves of a dry barrel. The English sharp- 
shooters then hid behind pork barrels placed in three tiers filled 
with sand ; but Colonel Mercer, their officer, was literally cut in 
two by a cannon shot, and the women, cooped up inside the bar- 
racks, begged the officers to avoid Indian massacre by surrender. 



248 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

A white flag was waved. Including women, something under a 
thousand English surrendered themselves prisoners to Montcalm. 
The Indians fell at once to mad plunder. Spite of the terms of 
honorable surrender, the English were stripped of everything, 
and only Montcalm's promise of ^10,000 worth of presents to 
the savages prevented butchery. The victors decamped to Mont- 
real, well pleased with the campaign of 1756. It need not be told 
that there were constant raids and counter raids along the frontier 
during the entire year. 

Loudon, the English commander, did not arrive in New York 
till well on in midsummer of 1756, and he found far different ma- 
terial from the trained bushfighters in the hands of Montcalm. 
The English soldiers were raw provincial recruits, dressed, at 
best, in buckskin, but for the most part in the rough homespun 
which they had worn when they had left plow and carpenter's 
bench and fishing boat. While Montcalm was capturing Oswego, 
Loudon was licking his rough recuits into shape, " making men 
out of mud " for the campaign of 1757. Indeed, it was said of 
Loudon, and the saying stuck to him as characteristic of his 
campaign, that he resembled the wooden horse figure of a 
tavern sign, — always on horseback but never rode forward. 
Instead of striking at Lake Champlain or on the Ohio, where 
the French were aggressors, Loudon planned to repeat the bril- 
liant capture of Louisburg. July of 1857 found him at Halifax- 
planting vegetable gardens to prevent scurvy, — "the cabbage 
campaign" it was derisively called, — and waiting for Gorham's 
rangers to reconnoiter Louisburg. Gorham's scouts brought back 
word that the French admiral had come in with twenty-four men- 
of-war and seven thousand men. To overpower such strength 
meant a prolonged siege. It was already August. Loudon sailed 
back to New York without firing a gun, while the English fleet, 
trying to reconnoiter Louisburg,' suffered terrible shipwreck. 

Montcalm was not the enemy to let the chance of Loudon's 
absence from the scene of action pass unimproved. While Loudon 
is pottering at Halifax, Montcalm marshals his troops to the 



SCKNE ON LAKE 



»49 



number of eight thousand, including one thousand Indians at 
Carillon or Ticonderoga, where Lake George empties into Lake 
Champlain. Portaging two hundred and fifty flatboats with as 
man)' birch canoes up the river, the French invade the mountain 
wilderness of Lake George. Towards the end of July, Levis leads 
part of the troops by land up the west shore towards the English 
post of Fort William Henry. Montcalm advances on the lake with 
the flatboats and canoes, 
and the rafts with the heavy 
artillery. Each night Levis' 
troops kindle their signal 
fires on the mountain slope, 
and each night Montcalm 
from the lake signals back 
with torches. It needs 
artist's brush to paint the 
picture : the forested moun- 
tains green and lonely and 
silent in the shimmering- 
sunlight of the summer sky; 
the lake gold as molten 
metal in the fire of the set- 
ting sun; the soldiers in 
their gay uniforms of white 
and blue, hoisting tent 
cloths on oar sweeps for 
sails as a breeze dimples 

the waters ; the French voyageurs clad in beaded buckskin chant- 
ing some ditty of Old-World fame to the rhythmic dip of the 
Indian paddles ; the Indians naked, painted for war, with a glit- 
ter in their eyes of a sinister intent which they have no mind 
to tell Montcalm ; and then, at the south of Lake George, nes- 
tling between the hills and the water, the little palisaded fort, — 
Fort William Henry, — with gates fast shut and two thousand 
bushfighters behind the walls, weak from an epidemic of smallpox, 
and, as usual, so short of provisions that siege means starvation. 





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THE KARI, OF LOCDON 



250 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Twenty miles southeastward is another Enghsh fort, — Fort 
Edward, — where General Webb with sixteen hundred men is 
keeping the road barred against advance to Albany. Soon as 
scouts bring word to Fort William Henry of the advancing French, 
Lieutenant Monro sends frantic appeal to W' ebb for more men ; 
but Webb has already sent all the men he can spare. If he leaves 
Fort Edward, the French by a flank movement through the woods 
can march on Albany, so Monro unplugs his seventeen cannon, 
locks his gates, and bides his fate. 

Montcalm follows the same tactics as at Oswego, — brings 
heavy artillery against slab walls. For the first week of August, 
eight hundred of his men are digging trenches by night to avoid 
giving target for the fiery bombs whizzing" through the dark 
from Monro's cannon. By day they lie hidden in the woods with 
a cordon of sharpshooters encircling the fort, Montcalm encamped 
on the west to prevent help from Sir William Johnson up the 
Mohawk, Levis on the southeast to cut off aid from Webb. 
Monro sends }'et one last appeal for help : two thousand men 
against eight thousand, — the odds are eloquent of his need ! 
Montcalm's scouts let the messenger pass through the lines as if 
unseen, but they make a point of catching the return messenger 
and holding Webb's answer that he cannot come, till their cannon 
have torn great wounds in the fort walls. Then Bougainville 
blindfold carries Webb's answer to Monro and demands the sur- 
render of the fort. Monro still has a little ammunition, still hopes 
against hope that Johnson or Webb or Loudon will come to the 
rescue, and he keeps his big guns singing over the heads of the 
French in their trenches till all the cannon have burst but seven, 
and there are not ten rounds of shells left. Then Colonel Young, 
with a foot shot off, rides out on horseback waving a white flag. 
Three hundred English have been killed, as many again are 
wounded or ill of smallpox, and to the remaining garrison of six- 
teen hundred Montcalm promises safe conduct to General Webb 
at Fort Edward. Then the English march out. That night — 
August 9— the vanquished English camp with Montcalm's forces. 
The Indians, meanwhile, ramping through the fort for plunder, 



MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY 251 

have maddened themselves with traders' rum ! Before daybreak 
they have butchered all the wounded lying in the hospital and cut 
to pieces the men ill of smallpox, — a crime that brought its own 
punishment in contagion. Next morning, when the French guard 
tried to conduct the disarmed English along the trail to Fort 
Edward, the Indians snatched at the clothing, the haversacks, 
the tent kit of the marchers. With their swords the French beat 
back the drunken horde. In answer, the war hatchets were waved 
over the heads of the cowering women. The march became a 
panic ; the panic, a massacre ; and for twenty-four hours such 
bedlam raged as might have put fiends to shame. The frenzied 
Indians would listen to no argument but blows ; and when the 
English prisoners appealed to the French for protection, the 
French dared not offend their savage allies by fighting to protect 
the English victims. "Take to the woods," they warned the 
men, and the women were quickly huddled back to shelter of the 
fort. Of the men, sixty were butchered on the spot and some 
seven hundred captured to be held for ransom. The remnant of 
the English soldiers, along with the women, were held till the 
Indian frenzy had spent itself, then sent to Fort Edward. 
August 16 a torch was put to the combustibles of the fort ruins, 
and as the French boats glided out on Lake George for the St. 
Lawrence, explosion after explosion, flame leaping above flame, 
proclaimed that of Fort William Henry there would remain naught 
but ashes and charred ruins and the skeletons of the dead. So 
closed the campaign of 1857. For three years hand running 
England had suffered defeat. 

The spring of 1758 witnessed a change. The change was the 
rise to power of a man who mastered circumstances instead of 
allowing them to master him. Such men are the milestones of 
human progress, whether heroes, or quiet toilers unknown to the 
world. The man was Pitt, the English statesman. Instead of a 
weak ministry fighting the machinations of France, it was now 
Pitt versus Pompadour, the English i)atriot against the light 
woman who ruled the councils of France. 



252 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

From fighting weakly on the defensive, England sprang into 
the position of aggressor all along the line. The French were to 
be attacked at all points simultaneously, at Fouisburg on the 
east, at Ticonderoga or Carillon on Fake Champlain, at Duquesne 
on the Ohio, at Frontenac on Fake Ontario, and finally at Que- 
bec itself. Foudon is recalled as commander in chief. Abercrom- 
bie succeeds to the position, with the brilliant young soldier, Ford 
Howe, as right-hand man ; but Pitt takes good care that there 
shall be good chiefs and good right-hand men at all points. The 
one mistake is Abercrombie, — " Mrs. Nabby Crombie " the sol- 
diers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man ; 
and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater 
goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than 
the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt 
trusted to the excellence of the subordinate officers, especially 
Ford Howe. 

Fouisburg first ! 

No more dillydallying and delay " to plant cabbages ! " The 
thing is to reach Fouisburg before the P'rench have entered the 
harbor. Men-of-war are stationed to intercept the P'rench vessels 
coming from the Mediterranean, and before winter has passed 
Admiral Boscawen has sailed for America with one hundred and 
fifty vessels, including forty men-of-war, frigates, and transports 
carrying twelve thousand men. General Amherst is to command 
the land forces, and with Amherst is Brigadier James Wolfe, age 
thirty-one, a tall, slim, fragile man, whose delicate frame is tenanted 
by a lion spirit ; or, to change the comparison, by a motive power 
too strong for the weak bodyjhat held it. By May the fleet is in 
Halifax. By June Amherst has joined Boscawen, and the ships 
beat out for Fouisburg through heavy fog, with a sea that boils 
over the reefs in angry surf. 

Fouisburg was in worse condition than during the siege of 
1 745 . The broken walls have been repaired, but the filling is false, 
— sand grit. Its population is some four thousand, of whom three 
thousand eight hundred are the garrison. On the ships lying in 
the harbor are three thousand marines, a defensive force, in all, 



I .OU I SBUR( 'r BKSI RGE D 



25. 



of six thousand eight hundred. On walls and in bastions are 
some four hundred and fifty heavy guns, cannon, and mortars. 
Imagine a triangle with the base to the west, the two sides run- 
ning out to sea on the east. The fort is at the apex. The wall 
of the base line is protected by a marsh. On the northeast side 
is the harbor protected by reefs and three batteries. Along the 
south side, Drucourt, the French commander, has stationed two 
thousand men at three different points where landing is possible, 
to construct batteries be- 
hind barricades of logs. 

Fog had concealed the 
approach of the English, 
but such a ground swell 
was raging over the reefs 
as threatened any ship 
with instant destruction. 
For a week Amherst and 
Wolfe and Lawrence row 
up and down through the 
roiling mist and raging 
surf and singing winds to 
take stock of the situa- 
tion,. With those bat- 
teries at the landing places 
there is only one thing to do, — cannonade them, hold their atten- 
tion in a life-and-death fight while the English soldiers scramble 
through the surf for the shore. From sunrise to sundown of the 
8th furious cannonading set the green seas churning and tore up 
the French barricades as by hurricane. At sunset the firing 
ceased, and three detachments of troops launched out in whale- 
boats at three in the morning, two of the detachments to make 
a feint of landing, while Wolfe with the other division was to 
run through the surf for the shore at Freshwater Cove. The 
French were not deceived. They let Wolfe approach within 
range, when the log barricade flashed to flame with a thousand 
sharpshooters. Wolfe had foreseen the snare and had waved his 




BOSC.AWEN 



254 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

troops off when he noticed that two boat loads were rowing 
ashore through a tremendous surf under shelter of a rocky point. 
Quickly he signaled the other boats to follow. In a trice the boats 
had smashed to kindling on the reefs, but the men were wading 
ashore, muskets held high over head, powder pouches in teeth, 
and rushed with bayonets leveled against the French, who had 
dashed from cover to prevent the landing. This unexpected land- 
ing had cut the French off from Louisburg. Retreating in panic, 
they abandoned their batteries and fifty dead. The English had 
lost one hundred and nine in the surf. It is said that Wolfe 
scrambled from the water like a drowned rat and led the rush 
with no other weapon in hand but his cane. 

To land the guns through the jostling sea was the next task. 
It was done, as in 1745, by a pontoon bridge of small boats, but 
the work took till the 29th of June. Wolfe, meanwhile, has 
marched with twelve hundred men round to the rear of the marsh 
and comes so suddenly on the Grand and Lighthouse Batteries, 
which defend the harbor, that the French abandon them to re- 
treat within the walls. This gives the English such control of the 
harbor entrance that Drucourt, the French commander, sinks six 
of his ships across the channel to bar out Boscawen's fleet, the 
masts of the sunken vessels sticking above the water. Amherst's 
men are working like demons, building a road for the cannon 
across the marsh and trenching up to the back wall ; but they 
work only at night and are undiscovered by the French till the 
9th of July. Then the French rush out with a whoop to drive 
them off, but the English already have their guns mounted, and 
Drucourt's men are glad to dash for shelter behind the cracking 
walls. It now became a game of cannon play pure and simple. 
Boscawen from harbor front hurls his whistling bombs overhead, 
to crash through roofs inside the walls. Wolfe from the Light- 
house Battery throws shells and flaming combustibles straight 
into the midst of the remaining French fleet. At last, on July 
2 1st, masts, sails, tar ropes, take fire in a terrible conflagration, 
and three of the fleet burn to the water line with terrific explo- 
sions of their powder magazines ; then the flames hiss out above 



SURRENDER OF FAMOUS FORT 



!55 



the rocking hulls. Only two ships are left to the French, and the 
deep bomb-proof casemates inside the fort between outer and 
inner walls, where the families and the wounded have been shel- 
tered, are now in flame. Amherst loads his shells with combus- 
tibles and pours one continuous rain of fiery death on the doomed 
fort. The houses, which are of logs, flame like kindling wood, 
and now the timber work of the stone bastions is burning from 
bombs hurtling through the roofs. The walls crash down in 
masses. The scared surgeons, all bloody from amputating shat- 
tered limbs, no longer stand in safety above their operating tables. 




THE. SIEGE OF LOUISBURG 
(From a contemporary print) 



It is said that Madame Drucourt, the Governor's wife, actually 
Stayed on the walls to encourage the soldiers, with her own hands 
fired some of the great guns, and, when the overworked surgeons 
flagged from terror and lack of sleep, it was Madame Drucourt 
who attended to the wounded. Drucourt is for holding out to the 
death, until one dark night the English row into the harbor and 
capture his two last ships. Then Drucourt asks for terms, July 
26 ; but the terms are stern, — utter surrender, — and Drucourt 
would have fought till every man fell from the walls, had not one of 
the civil officers rushed after the commander's messenger carrying 



256 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the refusal, and shouted across the ditches to the EngHsh : " We 
accept ! We surrender ! We accept your terms ! " 

Counting soldiers, marines, and townspeople, in all five thou- 
sand French pass over to Amherst, to be carried prisoners on 
Boscawen's fleet to England. Wolfe was for proceeding at once 
to Quebec, but Amherst considered the season too late and deter- 
mined to complete the work where he was. One detachment 
goes to receive the surrender of Isle St. John, henceforth known 
as Prince Edward Island. Another division proceeds up St. John 
River, New Brunswick, burning all settlements that refuse uncon- 
ditional surrender. Wolfe's grenadiers are sent to reduce Gaspe 
and Miramichi and northern New Brunswick. And now, lest 
blundering statecraft for a second time return the captured fort 
to France, Amherst and Boscawen order the complete disarma- 
ment and destruction of Louisburg. What cannon cannot be 
removed are tumbled into the marsh or upset into the sea. The 
stones from the walls are carried away to Halifax. By 1760, 
of Louisburg, the glory of New France, the pride of America, 
there remains not a vestige but grassed slopes overgrown by 
nettles, ditches with rank growth of weeds, stone piles where 
the wild vines grow, and an inner yard where the cows of the 
fisher folk pasture. 

Not a poor beginning for the campaign of 1758, though bad 
enough news has come from Major General Abercrombie, which 
was the real explanation of Amherst's refusal to push on to 
Quebec. 

Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand men, the pick of the reg- 
ulars and provincials, had launched out on Lake George on the 
5th of July with over one thousand boats, to descend the lake 
northward to the French fort of Carillon or Ticonderoga. Again, 
it would require artist's brush to paint the scene. Rogers' Ran- 
gers, dressed in buckskin, led the way in birch canoes. Lord 
Howe was there, dressed like a bushfighter ; and with bagpipes 
setting the echoes ringing amid the lonely mountains, were the 
Highland regiments in their tartan plaids. Flags floated from 
the prow of every lx)at. Each battalion had its own regimental 



THE ATTACK AT TICONDEROGA 



^57 



band. Scarcely a breath dimi^led the waters of the lake, and 
the sun shone without a cloud. Little wonder those who passed 
through the fiery Aceldama that was to come, afterwards looked 
back on this scene as the fairest in their lives. 

Montcalm had only arri\ed at Ticonderoga on June 30th. 
There was no doubting the news. His bushrovers brought in 
word that the English were advancing in such multitudes their 
boats literally covered 
the lake. It looked as if 
the fate of h'ort William 
Henry were to be re- 
versed. Montcalm never 
dreamed of Abercrombie 
attacking without artil- 
lery. To stay cooped up 
in the fort would invite 
destruction. Therefore 
Montcalm ordered his 
men out to construct a 
circular breastwork from 
the River of the Chutes 
on the southeast, which 
empties Lake George, 
round towards Lake 
Champlain on the north- 
west. Huge trees were 
felled, pile on pile, top- amhekst 

most branches spiked 

and pointed outwards, behind these Montcalm intrenched his 
four thousand men, lying in lines three deej), with grenadiers in 
reserve behind to step up as the foremost lines fell. At a cannon 
signal from the fort the men were to rise to their places, but not 
to fire till the lilngiish were entangled in the brushwood. It was 
blisteringly hot weather. It is said that the troops took off their 
heavy three-cornered hats and lay in their shirt sleeves, hand on 
musket, speaking no word, but waiting. 




258 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

On came the English in martial array, pausing in the Narrows 
at five o'clock for the troops' evening meal, moving on before 
daylight of July 6 to the landing place. The Rangers had 
brought in word that Levis was coming posthaste to Montcalm's 
aid. Abercrombie thought to defeat Montcalm before reenforce- 
ments could come ; and now he committed his cardinal .error. He 
advanced across the portage without his heavy artillery. Half- 
way over, the voice of the French scouts rang out, " Who goes 
there .? " " French," answer the English soldiers ; but the French 
were not tricked. The ambushed scouts fired. Lord Howe, the 
very spirit of the English army, dropped dead, shot through the 
breast, though the English avenged his loss by cutting the French 
scouts to pieces. On the night of the 7th the English army 
bivouacked in sight of the French barricade. Promptly at twelve 
o'clock next day a cannon shot from Ticonderoga brought 
every Frenchman behind the tree line to his place at a leap. 
Abercrombie had ordered his men to rush the barricade. There 
was fearful silence till the English were within twenty paces of 
the trees. There they broke from cjuick march to a run with a 
wild halloo ! Death imerring blazed from the French barricade, 
— not bullets only, but broken glass and ragged metal that tore 
hideous wounds in the ranks of the English. Caught in the 
brushwood, iniable even to see their foes, the maddened troops 
wavered and fell back. Again Abercrombie roared the order to 
charge. Six times they hurled themselves against the impassable 
wall, and six times the sharpshooters behind the lines met the ad- 
vance with a rain of fire. The Highland troops to the right went 
almost mad. Lord John Murray, their commander, had fallen, 
and not a tenth of their number remained unwounded ; but the 
broadswords wrought small havoc against the spiked branches 
of the log barricade. Obstinate as he was stupid, Abercrombie 
kept his men at the bloody but futile attempt till the sun had set 
behind the mountains, etching the sad scene with the long painted 
shadows. Already almost two thousand English had fallen, — 
seven hundred killed, the rest wounded. The French behind the 
barricade, where Montcalm marched up and down in his shirt 



ARERCROMBIR'S FORCES FLEE 



259 



sleeves, grimed with smoke, encouraging the men, had lost less 
than four hundred. In a spirit of hilarious bravado a young 
Frenchman sprang to the top of the barricade and waved a coat 
on the end of his bayonet. Mistaking it for a flag of surrender, 
the English ceased firing and dashed up with muskets held 
on the horizontal above 
heads. They were actu- 
ally scaling the wall when 
a French officer, realiz- 
ing the blunder, roared : 
" Shoot ! shoot ! you 
fools ! Don't }'ou see 
those men will seize 
you .'' " 

Cleaning guns and 
eating snatches of food, 
Montcalm's men slept 
that night in their places 
behind the logs. Mont- 
calm had passed from 
man to man, personally 
thanking the troops for 
their valor. W'hen day- 
light came over the hills 
with wisps of fog like 
cloud banners from the 
mountain tops, and the 
sunlight pouring gold 
mist through the valley, 

the French rose and rubbed their eyes. They could scarcely 
believe it ! Surely Abercrombie would come back with his heavy 
guns. Like the mists of the morning the English had vanished. 
Far down the lake they were retreating in such panic terror 
they had left their baggage. Places were found on the portage 
by French scouts where the English had fled in such haste, 
marchers had lost their boots in the mud and not stopped to 




THE COUNTRY ROUND TICONDEROGA 



26o CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

find them. Such was the battle of Carillon, or Ticonderoga, — 
good reason for Amherst refusing to go on to Quebec. 

The year closed with two more victories for the English. 
Brigadier John Forbes and Washington succeeded in cutting 
their way up to Fort Duquesne by a new road. They found the 
fort abandoned, and, taking possession in November, renamed it 
Pittsburg after the great English statesman. The other victory 
was at Frontenac, or Kingston. As the French had concentrated 
at Lake Champlain, leaving Frontenac unguarded, Bradstreet 
gained permission from Abercrombie to lead three thousand men 
across Lake Ontario against La Salle's old fur post. Crossing 
from the ruins of old Oswego, Bradstreet encamped beneath the 
palisades of Frontenac on the evening of August 25. By morn- 
ing he had his cannon in range for the walls. Inside the fort 
Commandant de Noyan had less than one hundred men. At 
seven in the evening of August 27 he surrendered. Bradstreet 
permitted the prisoners to go down to Montreal on parole, to be 
exchanged for English prisoners held in Quebec. Furs to the 
value of $800,000, twenty cannon, and nine vessels were cap- 
tured. Bradstreet divided the loot among his men, taking for him- 
self not so much as a penny's worth. The fort was destroyed. 
So were the vessels. The guns and provisions were carried across 
the lake and deposited at Fort Stanwix, east of old Oswego. The 
loss of Duquesne on the Ohio and Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario 
cut French dominion in America in two. Henceforth there was 
no highway from New France to Louisiana. In September, Aber- 
crombie was recalled. Amherst became chief commander. 

Wolfe had gone home to England ill. It was while sojourning 
at the fashion resort, Bath, that he fell desperately in love with 
a Miss Lowther, to whom he became engaged. Then came the 
summons from Pitt to meet the cabinet ministers in the war ofifice 
of London. Wolfe was asked to take command of the campaign 
in 1759 against Quebec. It had been his ambition in Louisburg 
to proceed at once against Quebec. Here was his opportunity. 



WOLFE SAILS FOR QUEBEC 



261 



It need not be told, he took it. Amherst now, on the field south 
of Lake Champlain, received ;^io a day as commander in chief. 
For the greater task of reducing Quebec, Wolfe was to receive 
;^2 a day. Under him were to serve Monckton, Townshend, and 
Murray. Admiral Saunders was to command the fleet. Wolfe 
advised sending a few 
ships beforehand to guard 
the entrance to the St. 
Lawrence, and Durell was 
dispatched for this pui- 
pose long before the main 
armaments set out. B\ 
April 30 the combined 
fleet and army were at 
Halifax, Wolfe with a 
force of some 8500 men. 
Wolfe, now only in his 
thirty-third year, had 
been the subject of sucli 
jealousy that he was actu- 
ally compelled to sail from 
Louisburg in June with- 
out one penny of ready 
money in his army chest. 
LTnderling officers, whose 
duty it was to advance 
him money on credit, had 
raised difficulties. 

Cheers and cheers yet again rent the air as the fleet at last 
set out for the St. Lawrence, the soldiers on deck shouting them- 
selves hoarse as Louisburg faded over the watery horizon, the 
officers at table the first night out at sea drinking toast after 
toast to British colors on every FrcncJi fort iii America. 

At Quebec was fast and furious preparation for the coming 
siege. Bougainville had been sent to France from Lake Cham- 
plain in 1758 with report of the victory at Ticonderoga. \\\ vain 




CF.NERAL yAMES WOLFE 



262 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

he appealed for more money, more men for the coming conflict ! 
The French government sent him back to Quebec with a bundle 
of advice and platitudes and titles and badges and promotions and 
soft words, but of the sinew which makes war, men and money, 
France had naught to spare. The rumor of the English invasion 
was confirmed by Bougainville. Every man capable of bearing 
arms was called to Quebec except the small forces at the out- 
posts, and Bourlamaque at Champlain was instructed if attacked 
by Amherst to blow up Fort Carillon, then Crown Point, and 
retire. Grain was gathered into the state warehouses, and so 
stripped of able-bodied men were the rural districts that the crops 
of 1759 were planted by the w(Mnen and children. Fire ships and 
rafts were constructed, the channel of St. Charles River closed by 
sinking vessels, and a bridge built higher up to lead from Quebec 
City across the river eastward to Beauport and Montmorency. 
Along the high cliffs of the St. Lawrence from Montmorency 
Falls to Quebec were constructed earthworks and intrenchments 
to command the approach up the river. What frigates had come 
in with Bougainville were sent higher up the St. Lawrence to 
be out of danger ; but the crews, numbering 1400, were posted 
on the ramparts of Upper Town. Counting mere boys, Quebec 
had a defensive force variously given as from 9000 to 14,000 ; 
but deducting raw levies, who scarcely know the rules of the 
drill room, it is doubtful if Montcalm could boast of more than 
5000 able-bodied fighters. Still he felt secure in the impregnable 
strength of Quebec's natural position. July 29, when the enemy 
lay encamped beneath his trenches, he could write, " Unless they 
[the English] have wings, they cannot cross a river and effect a 
landing and scale a precipice." One cruel feature there was of 
Quebec's preparations. To keep the habitants on both sides the 
river loyal, Vaudreuil, the governor, issued a proclamation telling 
the people that the English intended to massacre the inhabitants, 
men, women, and children. Meanwhile, morning, noon, and night, 
the chapel bells are ringing . . . ringing . . . lilting . . . and 
calling the faithful to prayers for the destruction of the heretic 
invader ! Nuns lie prostrate day and night in prayer for the 



SIGNAL FIRES FOREWARN APPROACH OF ENEMY 26' 



country's deliverance from the English. Holy processions march 
through the streets, nuns and priests and little children in white, 
and rough soldiery in the uniforms with the blue facings, to pray 
Heaven's aid for victory. And while the poor people starve for 
bread, poultry is daily fattened on precious wheat that it may 
make tenderest meat for Intendant Bigot's table, where the painted 
women and drunken 
gamblers and gay officers 
nightly feast ! 

Signal fires light up 
the hills with ominous 
warning as the English 
fleet glides slowly abreast 
the current of the St. 
Lawrence, now pausing 
to sound where the yel- 
low riffle of the current 
shows shallows, now fol- 
lowing the course staked 
out by flags, here de- 
pending on the L'rench- 
man, whom they have 
comj^elled to act as pilot ! 
Nightly from hill to hill 
the signal fires leap to 
the sky, till one flames 
from Cape Tourmente, 

and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near. Among 
the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a 
young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator. 

June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with can- 
non, literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the 
end of Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to 
clatter of anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest. 
'*Pray Heaven they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet 
was wrecked long ago," sigh the nuns of Quebec. If they had 




BOUGAINVILLE 



264 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

prayed half as hard that their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their 
kings and their painted women whose nod could set Europe on fire 
with war, — if the holy sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vam- 
pires whose vices had brought doom to the land, to be swallowed 
in some abyss, their prayers might have been more effective with 
Heaven. 

Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds 
the Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure 
has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church ; 
and expressing" sardonic regret that the invaders have not come 
soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables of his garden. 

Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest ambi- 
tion, — Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right 
is the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to 
St. Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above 
the cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north 
shore of the St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles 
River into a lofty, steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: 
Upper Town and the convents and the ramparts and Castle St. 
Louis nestling on an upper ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond ; 
Lower Town crowding between the foot of the precipice and tide 
water. Look again how the St. Lawrence turns in a sharp angle 
at the precipice. Three sides of the city are water, — St. Charles 
River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across the steep face 
of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still steeper 
precipice to the far side. Only the rear of the city is vulnerable ; 
but it is walled and inaccessible. 

Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition ; but how 
to win it .'' 

The night of June 28 is calm, warm, pitch-dark, the kind of 
summer night when the velvet heat touches you as with a hand. 
The English soldiers of the crowded transports have gone ashore, 
when suddenly out of the darkness glide fire ships as from an 
under world, with flaming mast poles, and hulls in shadow, roaring 
with fire, throwing out combustibles, drifting straight down on 
the tide towards the English fleet, l^ut the French have managed 



BOTH SIDES BECOME SCALP RAIDERS 265 

badly. They have set the ships on fire too soon. The air is torn 
to tatters by terrific explosions that light up the outlines of the 
city spires and chiun the river to billows. Then the English 
sailors are out in small boats, avoiding the suck of the undertow. 
Throwing out grapi^ling hooks, they tow the flaming fire rafts 
away from their fleet. It is the first play of the game, and the 
French have lost. 

Monckton goes ashore south on Point Levis side next day. 
Townshend has landed his troops east of the Montmorency on 
the north shore. It is the second play of the game, and Wolfe 




Qutu.< //.:>-,'> "^ '^%-^'^- 



IHE .SHE OF QUEBEC .VXD THE (jRorXD OCCUPIED DURING 
THE SIEGE OF 1759 

has violated every rule of war, for he has separated his forces in 
three divisions close to a powerful enemy. He is counting on 
Montcalm's policy, however, and Montcalm's play is to lie inactive, 
sleeping in his boots, refusing to be lured to battle till winter 
drives the English off. It is usual in all accounts of the great 
struggle to find that certain facts have been suppressed. Let us 
frankly confess that when the English rangers went foraging 
they brought back French scalps, and when the French Indians 
went scouting they returned with English scalps. However, man- 
ners were improving. Strict orders are given : this is not a war 
on women ; neither women nor children are to be touched. Wolfe 
posts proclamations on the parish churches, calling on the habitants 
to stand neutral. In answer, they tear the proclamations down. 



266 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

By July 12 Wolfe's batteries on the south side of the river are 
preparing to shell the city. A band of five hundred students and 
habitants rows across from Quebec by night to dislodge the Eng- 
lish gunners, but mistaking their own shots for the_ shots of the 
enemy, fall on each other in the dark and retreat in wild confusion. 
Then the English cannon begin to do business. In a single day 
half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed 
bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the 
cathedral and setting a multitude of lesser buildings on fire. In the 
confusion of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, 
shrouding the ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip 
up the river beyond Quebec, but there the precipice of the river 
bank is still steeper, and Bougainville is on guard with two thou- 
sand men. For thirty miles around the English rangers ha\-e laid 
the country waste. Still Montcalm refuses to come out and fight. 

The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is fail- 
ing him, and who sees the season passing, no nearer the object of 
his ambition than when he came. As he had stormed the batteries 
of Louisburg, so now he decides to storm the heights of Montmo- 
rency. To any one who has stood on the knob of rock above the 
gorge where the cataract plunges to the St. Lawrence, or has 
scrambled down the bank slippery with spray, and watched the 
black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture must 
seem madness ; for French troops lined the intrenchments above 
the cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built. Below 
the cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be 
forded. From sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's 
cannon boomed from Levis across the city, from the fleet in mid 
channel, from the land camp on the east side of Montmorency. 
Montcalm rightly guessed, this presaged a night assault. To hide 
his design, Wolfe kept his transports shifting up and down the 
St. Lawrence, as if to land at Beauport halfway to the city. All 
the same, two armed transports, as if by chance, managed to get 
themselves stranded just opposite the redoubt below the cliff, 
where their cannon would protect a landing. Montcalm saw the 
move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks on the 



ENGLISH FAIL AT MONTMORENCY 267 

top of the cliff. Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at that time 
cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the St. 
Lawrence lay hidden in smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand 
men were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a 
rush of the tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated 
firing, and the cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At 
that moment Wolfe suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A 
frightful thunderstorm burst on the river, lashing earth and air 
to darkness. It was impossible to see five paces ahead or to aim 
a shot. The cliff roared dcnvn with miniature rivulets and the slip- 
pery clay bank gave to every step of the climbers slithering down 
waist-deep in mud and weeds. Powder was soaked. As the rain 
ceased, Indians were seen sliding down the cliff to scalp the 
wounded. Wolfe ordered a retreat. The drums rolled the recall 
and the English escaped pcllmell, the French hooting with de- 
rision at the top of the banks, the English yelling back strong 
oaths for the enemy to come out of its rat hole and fight like 
men. At the ford the men, soaked like water rats, and a sorry 
rabble, got into some sort of rank and burned the two stranded 
vessels as they passed back to the east side. In less than an hour 
four hundred and forty-three men had fallen, the most of them 
killed, many both dead and wounded, into the hands of the Indian 
scalpers. 

One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night. A month 
had passed. He had accomplished worse than nothing. In an- 
other month the fleet must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid au- 
tumn storms. Fragile at all times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and 
of chagrin, and those officers over whose head he had been pro- 
moted did not spare their criticisms, their malice. It is so easy 
to win battles of life and war in theory. 

As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won. 
Still bad news had come from the west. Niagara had fallen be- 
fore the English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were aban- 
doned to Amherst. Nothing now barred the English advance 
down the Richelieu to Montreal. Montcalm dispatches Levis to 
Montreal with eight hundred men. 



268 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Why did Amherst not come to Wolfe's aid ? His enemies say 
because the commanding general was so sure the siege of Quebec 
would fail that he did not want any share of the blame. That 
may be unjust. Amherst was of the slow, cautious kind, who 
marched doggedly to victory. He may not have wished to risk a 
second Ticonderoga. Wolfe's position was now desperate. His 

only alternatives were 
success or ruin. " You 
can't cure me," he told 
his surgeon, "but mend 
me up so I can go on for" 
a few days." What he 
did in those few days 
left his name immortal. 
Robert Stobo, who had 
been captured from Wash- 
ington's battalions on the 
Ohio, and who knew 
every foot of Quebec 
from five years of cap- 
tivity, had escaped, joined 
Wolfe, and drawn plans 
of all surroundings. From 
his ship above Quebec 
Wolfe could see there was 
one path just behind the 
city where men might 
ascend to the Plains of Abraham outside the rear wall, but the 
path was guarded, and Bougainville's troops patrolled westward 
as far as Cape Rouge. 

It was now September. From their trenches above the river 
the French could see the English evacuating camp at Montmo- 
rency. They were jubilant. Surely the English were giving up the 
siege. Night after night English transports loaded with soldiers 
ascended the St. Lawrence above Quebec. What did it mean.? 
Was it a feint to draw Montcalm's men away from the east side? 




LOUIS JOSEPH, MARCJUIS DE MONTCALM 



SLIP SILENTLY DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 269 

The French general was sleeplessly anxious. He had not passed 
a night in bed since the end of June. The fall rains were begin- 
ning, and another month of work in the trenches meant half the 
army invalided. 

The most of the English fleet was working up and down with 
the tide between the western limits of Quebec and Cape Rouge, 
nine miles away. Bougainville's force was increased to three thou- 
sand men, and he was ordered to keep especial watch westward. 
The steepness of the precipice was guard enough near the town. 
Wednesday, the 12th of September, the English troops were 
ordered to hold themselves in readiness. They passed the day 
cleaning their arms, and were ordered not to speak after nightfall 
or permit a sound to be heard from the ranks. Admiral Saunders 
with the main fleet was to feign attack on the east side of the 
city. Admiral Holmes with Wolfe's army, now numbering not four 
thousand men, \vas to glide down with the tide from Cape Rouge 
above Quebec. Because the main fleet lay on the east side Mont- 
calm felt sure the attack would come from that quarter. Deserters 
had brought word to Wolfe that some flatboats with provisions 
were coming down the river to Quebec that night. 

Here, then, the position ! Saunders on the east side, opposite 
Beauport, feigning attack ; Montcalm watching him from the 
Beauport cliffs ; Wolfe nine miles up the river west of the city ; 
Bougainville watching him, watching too for those provisions, for 
Quebec was down to empty larder. 

It is said that as Wolfe rested in his ship, the Sutkcrla^id, off 
Cape Rouge, he felt strange premonition of approaching death, and 
repeated the words of Gray's "Elegy," — "The paths of glory lead 
but to the grave," — but this has been denied. Certainly he had 
such strange consciousness of impending death that, taking a 
miniature of his fiancee from his breast, he asked a fellow-officer 
to return it to her. About midnight the tide began to ebb, and 
two lanterns were hung as a sign from the masthead of the 
SutJierland. Instantly all the ships glided silent as the great 
river down with the tide. The night was moonless. Near the 
little bridle path now known as Wolfe's Cove the ships draw 



2/0 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

ashore. Sharp as iron on stone a sentry's voice rings out, 
"Who goes ? " 

"The French," answers an officer, who speaks perfect French. 

" What regiment .? " 

"The Queen's," rephes the officer, who chances to know that 
Bougainville has a regiment of that name. Thinking they were 
the provision tran.sports, this sentry was satisfied. Not so another. 
He ran clown to the water's edge, and peering through the dark- 
ness called, " Why can't you speak louder ? " 

" Hush you ! W^e '11 be overheard," answers the English offi- 
cer in French. 

Thus the English boats glided towards the little bridle path 
that led up to the rear of the city. Wolfe's Cove is not a path 
steep as a stair up the face of a rock, as the most of the school- 
books teach ; it is a little weed-grown, stony gully, easy to climb, 
but slant and narrow, where I have walked many a night to drink 
from the spring near the foot of the cliff. 

Twenty-four volunteers lead the way up the stony path, silent 
and agile as cats. At the top are the tents of the sentries, who 
rush from their couches to be overpowered by the English. Be- 
fore daybreak the whole army has ascended to the plateau behind 
the city, known as the Plains of Abraham. No use entering here 
into the dispute whether Wolfe took his place where the goal 
now stands, or farther back from the city wall. Roughly speak- 
ing, the main line of Wolfe's forces, three deep, with himself, 
Monckton, and Murray in command, faced the rear of Quebec 
about three quarters of a mile from what was then the wall. To 
his left was the wooded road now known as St. Louis. He posts 
Townshend facing this, at right angles to his front line. Another 
battalion lay in the woods to the rear. There were, besides, a 
reserve regiment, and a battalion to guard the landing. 

What was Wolfe's position ? Behind him lay Bougainville 
with three thousand French soldiers, fresh and in perfect condi- 
tion. In front lay Quebec with three thousand more. To his right 
was the river ; to his left, across the St. Charles, Montcalm's 
main army of five thousand men. "When your enemies blunder. 



THE TWO ARMIES FACE EACH OTHER 271 

don't interrupt them," Napoleon is reported to have advised. If 
some one had not blundered badly now, it might have been a 
second Ticonderoga with Wolfe ; but some one did blunder most 
tragically. 

Montcalm had come from the trenches above Beau port, where 
he had been guarding against Saunders' landing, and he had 
ordered hot tea and beer served to the troops, when he hap- 
pened to look across the St. Charles River towards Quebec. It 
had been cloudy, but the sun had just burst out ; and there, 
standing in the morning light, were the English in battle array, 
red coat and tartan kilt, grenadier and Highlander, in the dis- 
tance a confused mass of color, which was not the white uni- 
form of the French. 

"This is a serious business," said Montcalm hurriedly to his 
aide. Then, spurs to his big black horse, he was galloping furi- 
ously along the Beauport road, over the resounding bridge across 
the St. Charles, up the steep cobblestone streets that lead from 
Lower to Upper Town, and out by the St. Louis road to the 
Plains of Abraham. In Quebec all was confusion. W/io had 
given the order for the troops to move out against the English 
without waiting for Bougain\'ille to come from Cape Rouge ? 
But there they were, huddling, disorderly columns that crowded 
on each other, filing out of the St. Louis and St. John Gates, 
with a long string of battalions following Montcalm up from the 
St. Charles. And Ramezay, who was commandant of the city, 
refused to send out part of his troops ; and Vaudreuil, who was 
at Beauport, delayed to come ; and though Montcalm waited till 
ten o'clock, Bougainville did not come up from Cape Rouge with 
his three thousand men. Easy to criticise and say Montcalm 
should have waited till Bougainville and Vaudreuil came. He 
could not wait, for Wolfe's position cut his forces in two, and 
the army was without supplies. With his four thousand five 
hundred men he accepted fate's challenge. 

Bagpipes shrilling, English flags waving to the. wind, the 
French soldiers shouting riotously, the two armies moved 
towards each other. Then the English halted, silent, motionless 



27: 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



statues. The men were refreshed, for during the four hours' 
wait from dayhght, Wolfe had permitted them to rest on the 
grassed plain. The French came bounding forward, firing as 
they ran, and bending down to reload. The English waited till 
the French were but forty yards away. "They were not to 
throw away their fire," Wolfe had ordered. Now forty yards, if 
you measure it off in your mind's eye, is short space between 
hostile armies. It is not as wide as the average garden front in 
a suburban city. Then suddenly the thin red line of the English 
spoke in a crash of fire. The shots were so simultaneous that 
they sounded like one terrific crash of ear-splitting thunder. The 
French had no time to halt before a second volley rent the air. 
Then a clattering fire rocketed from the British like echoes from 
a precipice. With wild halloo the British were charging, . . . 
charging, . . . charging, the Highlanders leading with their 
broadswords flashing overhead and their mountain blood on 
fire, Wolfe to the fore of the grenadiers till a shot broke his 
wrist ! Wrapping his handkerchief about the wound as he ran, 
the victorious young general was dashing forward when a sec- 
ond shot hit him and a third pierced his breast. He staggered a 
step, reeled, fell to the ground. Three soldiers and an officer 
ran to his aid and carried him in their arms to the rear. He 
would have no surgeon. It was useless, he said. "But the day 
is ours, and see that you keep it, " he muttered, sinking back 
unconscious. A moment later he was roused by wild, hilarious, 
jubilant, heart-shattering shouts. 

" Gad ! they run ! See how they run ! " said an English voice. 

" IJVio — run ? " demanded Wolfe, roused as if from the sleep 
of death. 

" The enemy, sir. They give way . . . everywhere." 

"Go, one of you," commanded the dying general; "tell Colo- 
nel Burton to march Webb's regiment down Charles River to 
cut off retreat by the bridge. Now God be praised ! " he added, 
sinking back ; " I die in peace ! ' ' And the spirit of Wolfe had 
departed, leaving as a heritage a New Empire of the North, and 
an immortal fame. 



DEATH OF MONTCALM 273 

Fate had gone hard against the gallant Montcalm. The first 
volley from the English line had mowed his soldiers down like 
ripe wheat. At the second volley the ranks broke and the ground 
was thick strewn with the dead. When the English charged, 
the P^rench fled in wildest panic downhill for the St. Charles. 
Wounded and faint, Montcalm on his black charger was swept 
swiftly along St. Louis road in the blind stami^ede of retreat. 
Near the walls a ball passed through his groins. Two soldiers 
caught him from falling, and steadied him on either side of his 
horse through St. Louis gate, where women, waiting in mad 
anxiety, saw the blood dripping over his horse. 

"My God ! My God ! (lur marquis is slain ! " they screamed. 

" It is nothing, — nothing, — good friends ; don't trouble about 
me," answered the wounded general as he passed for the last 
time under the arched gateway of St. Louis road. 

" How long have I to live ? " he asked the surgeon into whose 
house he had been carried. 

" Few hours, my lord." 

"So much the better," answered Montcalm. "I shall not live 
to see Quebec surrendered." 

Before daylight, he was dead. Wrapped in his soldier's cloak, 
laid in a rough box, the body was carried that night to the Ursu- 
line Convent, where a bursting bomb had scooped a great hole 
in the floor. Sad-eyed nuns and priests crowded the chapel. By 
torchlight, amid tears and sobs, the body was laid to rest. 

Both generals had died as they had lived, — gallantly. To-da}' 
both are regarded as heroes and commemorated by monuments ; 
but how did their governments treat them .'' Of course there 
were wild huzzas in London and solemn memorial services over 
Wolfe ; but when his aged mother petitioned the government 
that her dead son's salary might be computed at ^10 a day, — 
the salary of a commander in chief, — instead of £,2 a day, she 
was refused in as curtly uncivil a note as was ever penned. 
Montcalm had died in debt, and when his family petitioned the 
French government to pay these debts, the King thought it 
should be done, but he did not take the trouble to see that his 



274 CANADA: J Hi: KMPIKl': OF TllK NORTH 

good intention was carried out. It was easy and cheaper for ora- 
tors to talk of heroes giving their Hves for their country. There 
are no better examples in history of the truth that glory and 
honor and true service must be their own reward, independent of 
any compensation, any suffering, any sacrifice. 

Though the panic retreat continued for hours and Quebec was 
not surrendered for some days, the battle was practically decided 
in ten minutes. The campaign of the next year was gallant but 
fruitless. In April, before the fleet has come back to the Eng- 
lish, De Levis throws himself with the remnants of the French 
army against the rear wall of Quebec ; and as Montcalm had 
come out to fight Wolfe, so Murray marches out to fight De 
Levis. Both sides claimed the battle of Ste. Foye as victory, but 
another such victory would have exterminated the English. 
Levis outside the walls, Murray glad to be inside the walls, each 
side waited for the spring fleet. If France had come to Canada's 
aid, even yet the country might have been won, for sickness had 
reduced Murray's army to less than three thousand able men ; 
but the flag that flaunted from the ship that sailed into the har- 
bor of Quebec on the 9th of May was British. That decided 
Canada's fate. De Levis retreated swiftly for Montreal, but by 
September the slow-moving General Amherst has closed in on 
Montreal from the west, and up the St. Lawrence from the east 
proceeds General Murray. De Levis and Vaudreuil had less than 
two thousand fighting men at Montreal. September 8th they 
capitulated, and three years later, by the Treaty of Paris, Canada 
passed under the dominion of England. Oflicers, many of the 
nobility. Bigot and his crew, sailed for France, where the Intend- 
ant's ring were put on trial and punished for their corruption and 
misrule. Bigot suffered banishment and the confiscation of prop- 
erty. The other members. of his clique received like sentences. 

Spite of the hopes of her devoted founders, — like Champlain 
and Maisonneuve, — spite of the blood of her martyrs and the 
prayers of her missionaries, spite of all the pathfinding of her 



WHY NEW FRANCE FELL 275 

explorers, spite of the dauntless warfare of her soldier knights, 

— like Frontenac and Iberville and Montcalm, — New France 
had fallen. 

Why ? 

For two reasons : because of England's sea power ; because 
of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French 
court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a 
painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered, — and 
here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence, — the 
fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, 
was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New 
France, the appendage of an Old World nation. It is Canada, 

— a New Dominion. 

To-day wander round Quebec. Tablets and monuments con- 
secrate many of the old hero days. Though the British govern- 
ment rebuilt a line of walls in the early eighteen hundreds, you 
will find it hard to trace even a vestige of the old French walls. 
Mounds tell you where there were bastions. A magnificent bou- 
levard tops the most of the old ramparts. An imposing hotel 
stands where Castle St. Louis once frowned over the St. Law- 
rence. Of the palace where the Intendant held his revels there 
are not even ruins. If 30U drive out past Beauport, you will find 
at the end of a nine-mile forest path the crumbling brick walls 
of Chateau Bigot, the Hermitage, half buried, in the days when 
I visited it, with rose vines and orchard trees gone wild. That is 
all you will find of the court clique whose folly brought Canada's 
doom ; but as you drive back from Beauport there towers the 
city from the rocky heights above the St. Lawrence, — chapel 
spire and cross and domed cathedral roofs aglint in the sunlight 
like a city of gold. The church, baptized by the blood of its 
martyrs, is there in pristine power ; and the fruitful meadows 
bear witness to the prosperity of the habitant on whom the bur- 
den fell in the days of the ancient regime. Who shall say that 
habitant and church do not deserve the place of power they hold 
in the government of the Dominion ? 



CHAPTER XIII 

FROM 1763 TO 1812 

Quebec has fallen. As jackals gather to feast on the carcass 
of the dead lion, so rallies a rabble of adventurers on the trail of 
the victorious army. Sutlers, traders, teamsters, riffraff, — soldiers 
of fortune, — stampede to Montreal and Quebec as to a new gold 
field. When Major Robert Rogers, the English forest ranger, 
proceeds up the lakes to take over the western fur posts, — Presqu' 
Isle, Detroit, Michilimackinac, — he is followed by hosts of adven- 
turers looking for swift way to fortune by either the fur trade or 
by picking the bones of the dead lion. Major Rogers, beating up 
Lake Ontario and Lake Erie with two hundred bushwhackers, 
pausing in camp near modern Sandusky, meets the renowned 
Ottawa warrior, Pontiac, who had fought with the French against 
Braddock and now wants to know in voice of thunder what all 
this talk about the French being conquered means ; how dare the 
French, because tJiey have proved paltroons, deed away the Indian 
lands of Canada 1 How dare Rogers, the white chief of the Eng- 
lish rangers, come here with his pale-faced warriors to Pontiac 's 
land .? How Rogers answered the veteran red-skinned warrior is 
not told. All that is known is — the French gave up their west- 
ern furs with bad grace, and the English commandants forgot 
to appease the wound to the Indians' pride by the customary 
gifts over solemn powwow. At Detroit and Michilimackinac the 
French quietly withdraw from the palisades and build their white- 
washed cottages outside the limits of the fort — 2500 F'rench 
habitants there are at Detroit. 

If the four or five hundred English adventurers who swarmed 
to Canada on the heels of the English army thought to batten 
on the sixty thousand defeated French inhabitants, far other- 
wise thought and decreed the English generals. Sir Jeffrey 

276 



ENGLISH LAW AND QUEBEC 



277 



Amherst, and Murray, who succeeded him. " You will observe 
that the French are British subjects as much as we are, and 
treat them accordingly," ruled Amherst ; and General Murray, 
who practically became the first governor of Canada on Am- 
herst's withdrawal, at once set himself to establish justice. 

No more forced labor ! 
No more carrion birds of 
the official classes, like 
Bigot, fattening on the 
poor habitants ! British 
government in Canada for 
the next few years is 
known as the period of 
military rule. At Quebec, 
at Three Rivers, at Mont- 
real, the commanding 
officers established mar- 
tial law with biweekly 
courts ; and in the par- 
ishes the local French 
officers, or seigneurs, are 
authorized to hear civil 
cases. By the terms of 
surrender the people have 
been guaranteed their 
religious liberty; and the 
Treaty of Paris, which 
cedes all Canada to Eng- 
land in 1763, repeats this guarantee, though it leaves a thorn 
of trouble in the flesh of England by reserving to France for 
the benefit of the Grand Banks fishermen the Islands of 
St. Pierre and Miquelon, as well as shore rights of fishing on 
the west coast of Newfoundland. Also, the proprietary rights 
of Jesuits, Sulpicians, Franciscans, are to remain in abeyance for 
the pleasure of the English crown. The rights of the sisterhoods 
are at once confirmed. 




M.AJOR ROBERT ROGERS 



278 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



One of General Murray's first acts as governor is to convey 
gentle hint to the Abbe Le Loutre, now released from prison and 
come back to Canada, that his absence will be appreciated by the 
government. Within a few years there are five hundred English 
residents in Montreal and Quebec ; and now trouble begins for 
the government, — that wrangle between English and French, 
between Protestant and Catholic, which is to go on for a hundred 
years and retard Canada's progress by a century. 

Being British-born subjects, the few hundred demand that the 
Governor call an assembl)-, — an elective assembly ; but by the 

laws of England, Roman Cath- 
olics must abjure their religion 
before they can take office, and 
by the Treaty of Paris the 
Catholics of Canada have been 
guaranteed the freedom of their 
religion. To grant an elective 
assembly now would mean that 
the representatives of the five 
hundred P^ngiish traders would 
rule over 70,000 French. When 
accusing the French Catholics 
of Quebec of remaining a soli- 
darity so that they may wield 
the balance of power, it is well to remember how and when the 
quarrel began. Murray sides with the French and stands like 
a rock for their right. He will have no elective assembly under 
present conditions; and he puts summary stop to the business 
English magistrates and English bailiffs have hatched against 
the rights of the habitant, — of seizing lands for debt at a time 
when money is scarce, summoning the debtor simultaneously to 
two different courts, then charging such outrageous fees that 
the delator's land is sold for the fees, to be bought in by the 
rascal ring who have arranged the plot. Ordinances are still 
proclaimed in primitive fashion by the crier going through the 
streets shouting the laws to beat of drum ; but as the crier 




NORTH AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF 
THIC FRENCH WARS, 1763 



FRENCH RIGHTS GUARDED 279 

shouts in English, the hal^itants know no more of the laws than 
if he shouted in Greek. 

As Murray opposes the clamor of the English minority, the 
English petition the home government for Murray's recall. In 
the light of the fact that there were no schools at all in Canada 
except the Catholic seminaries, and that of the five hundred Eng- 
lish residents onl)' two hundred had permanent homes in Mont- 
real and Quebec, it is rather instructive to read as one of the 
grievances of the English minority " that the only teachers in 
Canada were Catholics.'" 

The governor-generalship is offered to Chatham, the great 
statesman, at ;^50oo a year. Chatham refusing the position, 
there comes in 1768 as governor, at ^1,200 a year, Sir Guy 
Carleton, fellow-soldier and friend of Wolfe in the great war, 
who follows in Murray's footsteps, stands like a rock for the rights 
of the French, orders debtors released from jail, fees reduced, 
and a stoppage of forced land sales. Bitter is the disappointment 
to the land jobbers, who had looked for a partisan in Carleton ; 
doubly bitter, for Carleton goes one better than Murray. For 
)'ears the French government had issued paper money in Quebec. 
After the conquest seventeen millions of these worthless govern- 
ment promissory notes were outstanding in the hands of the 
habitants. Knowing that the paper money is to be redeemed by 
the English government, English jobbers are now busy buying 
up the paper among the poor French at fifteen cents on the dol- 
lar. Carleton sends the town crier from parish to parish, warning 
the habitants to hold their money and register the amounts with 
the magistrates till the whole matter can be arranged between 
England and France. 

The first newspaper is established now in Quebec, The 
Quebec Gazette, printed in both English and French. Also 
the first trouble now arises from having ceded France the two 
tiny islands south of Newfoundland, St. Pierre and Miquelon. 
By English navigation laws, all trade must be in English ships. 
Good ! The smugglers slip into St. Pierre with a cargo. By 
night a ship with a white sail slips out of St. Pierre with that 



2 So 



CANADA: THE KMPIRK OF THE NORTH 



cargo. At Gaspe the sail of that ship is red ; at Saguenay it 
is yellow ; at Quebec it is perhaps brown. Ostensibly the ship 
is a fishing smack, but it leaves other cargo than fish at the 
habitant hamlets of the St. Lawrence ; and the smuggling from 
St. Pierre that began in Carleton's time is continued to-day in 

the very same way. 

And Guy Carleton, 
though he is an Eng- 
lishman and owes his 
appointment to the com- 
plaints of the English 
minority against Murray, 
remains absolutely im- 
partial. Good reason for 
the wisdom of his policy. 
There are rumblings from 
the New England colo- 
nies that forewarn the 
coming earthquake. For 
years friction has been 
growing between the 
mother country and the 
colonies. The story of 
the Revolution does not 
belong to the story of 
Canada. For years far- 
sighted statesmen had 
predicted that the min- 
ute New England ceased 
to fear New France, ceased to need England's protection, that 
minute the growing friction would flame in open war. Carleton 
foresaw that to pander to the English minority would sacrifice 
the loyalty of the French. Thus he reported to the home gov- 
ernment, and the Quebec Act of 1774 came to the relief of the 
French. By it Canada's boundaries were extended across the 
region of the Ohio to the Mississippi. French laws were restored 




GENERAL MURRAY, FIRST GOVERNOR 
OF QUEBEC 



PONTIAC'S WAR 28 1 

in all civil actions. English law was to rule in criminal cases, 
which meant trial by jury. The French are relieved from oaths 
of office and enabled to serve on the jury. Also, the Catholic 
clergy is entitled to collect its usual tithe of one twenty-sixth 
from the Catholics. An elective assembly is refused for reasons 
that are plain, but a legislative council is granted, to be appointed 
by the crown. For the expense of government a slight tax is 
levied on liquor ; but as the St. Pierre smuggling is now flourish- 
ing, the tax does not begin to meet the cost of government, and 
the difference is paid from the imperial treasury. However badly 
the imperial government blundered with the New England colo- 
nies, her treatment of Quebec was an object lesson in colonizing 
to the world. Had she treated her New England colonies half 
as justly as she treated Quebec, British America might to-day 
extend to Mexico. Had she treated Quebec half as unjustly as 
she treated her own offspring of New England, the United 
States might to-day extend to the Arctic Circle. The man who 
saved Canada to England, in the first place by wisdom, in the 
second place by war, was Sir Guy Carleton. 

While the English and French, Protestant and Catholic, 
wrangle for power in Quebec there rages on the frontier one 
of the most devastating Indian wars known to American history. 
Not for nothing had Pontiac drawn himself to his full height 
and defied Major Rogers down on Lake Erie. From tribe to 
tribe the lithe coureurs ran, naked but for the breechcloth, 
painted as for war, carrying in one hand the tomahawk dipped 
in blood, in the other the wampum belt of purple, typifying war. 
The French had deeded away the Indian lands to the English ! 
The news ran like wildfire, ran by moccasin telegram from 
Montreal up Ottawa River to Michilimackinac, from Niagara 
westward to Detroit, and southward to Presqu' Isle and all that 
chain of forts leading southwestward to the Mississippi. Was 
it a "Conspiracy of Pontiac," as it has been called.? Hardly. 
It was more one of those general movements of unrest, of dis- 
content, of misunderstanding, that but awaits the appearance of 



282 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

a brave leader to become a torrent of destruction. Pontiac, the 
Ottawa chief, was such a leader, and to his standard rallied 
Indians from Virginia, from the Mississippi, from Lake Supe- 
rior. Of the universal unrest among the Indians the English 
were not ignorant, but they failed to realize its significance ; 
failed, too, to realize that the French fur traders, cast out of 
the western forts and now roaming the wilds, fanned the flame, 
gave presents of gunpowder and firearms to the savages, and 
egged the hostiles on against the new possessors of Canada, 
in order to divert the fur trade to French traders still in Louisi- 
ana. Down at Miami, southwest of Lake Erie, Ensign Holmes 
hears in March of 1763 that the war belt has been carried to 
the Illinois. Up at Detroit, in May, Pontiac is camped on the 
east side of the river with eight hundred hunters. Daily the 
French farmers, who supply the fort with provisions, carry word 
to Major Gladwin that the Indians are acting strangely, holding 
long and secret powwow, borrowing files to saw off the barrels 
of their muskets short. A French woman, who has visitedthe 
Indians across the river for a supply of maple sugar, comes to 
Gladwin on May 5 with the same story. From eight hundred, 
the Indians increase to two thousand. Old Catherine, a tooth- 
less squaw, comes shaking as with the palsy to the fort, and 
with mumbling words warns Gladwin to " Beware, beware ! " 
So does a young girl whose fine eyes have caught the fancy of 
Gladwin himself. Breaking out with bitter weeping, she covers 
her head with her shawl and bids her white lover have a care 
how he meets Pontiac in council. Gladwin himself was a sea- 
soned campaigner, who had escaped the hurricane of death with 
Braddock and had also served under Amherst at Montreal. In 
his fort are one hundred and twenty soldiers and forty traders. 
At the wharf lie the two armed schooners, Bra^'cr ^nd Gladivin. 
When Pontiac comes with his sixty warriors Gladwin is ready 
for him. In the council house the warriors seat themselves, 
weapons concealed under blankets ; but when Pontiac raises 
the wampum belt that was to be the signal for the massacre to 
begin, Major Gladwin, never moving his light blue eyes from 



SIEGE OF DETROIT 



'■83 



>'' 







the snaky gleam of the Indian, waves his hand, and at the 

motion there is a roll of drums, a grounding of the sentry's 

arms, a trampling of soldiers outside, a rush as of white men 

marching. Pontiac is dumfounded and departs without giving 

the signal. Back in his 

cabin of rushes across 

the river he rages like 

a maniac and buries a 

tomahawk in the skull of 

the old squaw Catherine. 

Monday, May 9, at ten 

o'clock he comes again, 

followed by a rabble of 

hunters. The gates are 

shut in his face. He 

shouts for admittance. 

The sentry opens the 

wicket and in traders' 

vernacular bids him go 

about his business. 

There is a wild war yell. 

The siege of Detroit 

begins. 

The story of that siege 
would fill volumes. For 
fifteen months it lasted, 
the French remaining 
neutral, selling provi- 
sions to both sides, Glad- 
win defiant inside his palisades, the Indians persistent as enraged 
hornets. Two English officers who have been out hunting are 
waylaid, murdered, skinned, the skin sewed into powder pouches, 
the bloody carcasses sent drifting down on the flood of waters 
past the fort walls. Desperately in need of provisions from 
the French, Gladwin consents to temporary truce while Cap- 
tain Campbell and others go out to parley with the Indians. 



1-^ 



SETTLEMENTS OX THE DETROrr RIVER 



284 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Gladwin obtains cart loads of provisions during the parley, but 
Pontiac violates the honor of war by holding the messengers 
captive. Burning arrows are shot at the fort w^alls. Gladwin's 
men sally out by night, hack down the orchards that conceal 
the enemy, burn all outbuildings, and come back without losing 
a man. Nightly, too, lapping the canoe noiselessly across water 
with the palm of the hand, one of the French farmers comes 
with fresh provisions. Gladwin has sent a secret messenger, with 
letter in his powder pouch, through the lines of the besiegers to 
Niagara for aid. May 30, moving slowly, all sails out, the English 
flag flying from the prow, comes a convoy of sailboats up the river. 
Cheer on cheer rent the air. The soldiers at watch in the gal- 
leries inside the palisades tossed their caps overhead, but as the 
ships came nearer the whites were paralyzed with horror. Silence 
froze the cheer on the parted lips. Indian warriors manned the 
boats. The convoy of ninety-six men had been cut to pieces, 
only a few soldiers escaping back to Niagara, a few coming on, 
compelled by the Indians to act as rowers. As the boats passed 
the fort, whoops of derision, wild war chants, eldritch screams, 
rose from the Indians. One desperate white captive rose like a 
flash from his place at the rowlocks, caught his Indian captor by 
the scuff of the neck and threw him into the river ; but the red- 
skin grappled the other in a grip of death. Turning over and 
over, locked in each other's arms, the hate of the inferno in their 
faces, soldier and Indian swept down to watery death in the river 
tide. Taking advantage of the confusion, and under protection 
of the fort guns, one of the other captives sprang into the river 
and succeeded in swimming safely to the fort. Terrible was the 
news he brought. All the other forts south of Niagara, with the 
exception of Fort Pitt, — Miami, St. Joseph, Presqu' Isle, — lay 
in ashes. From some not a man had escaped to tell the story. 

That night it was pitch-dark, — soft, velvet, warm summer dark- 
ness. From the fort the soldiers could see the sixty captives 
from the convoy burning outside at the torture stakes. Then as 
gray morning came mangled corpses floated past on the river 
tide. June 18 another vessel glides up the river with help, but 



FIGHT AT BLOODY RUN 285 

the garrison is afraid of a second disaster, for eight hundred 
warriors have lain in ambush along the river. Gladwin orders a 
cannon fired. The boat fires back answer, but the wind falls and 
she is compelled to anchor for the night below the fort. Sixty 
soldiers armed to the teeth are on board ; but the captain is de- 
termined to out-trick the Indians, and he permits only twelve of 
his men at a time on deck. Darkness has barely fallen on the 
river before the waters are alive with canoes, and naked warriors 
clamber to the decks like scrambling monkeys, so sure they have 
outnumbered their prey that they forget all caution. At the signal 
of a hammer knock on deck, — rap — rap — rap, — three times 
short and sharp, up swarm the soldiers from the hatchway. 
Fourteen Indians dropped on the deck in as many seconds. 
Others were thrown on bayonet points into the river. It is said 
that after the fight of a few seconds on the ship the decks looked 
like a butcher's shambles. Finally the schooner anchored at De- 
troit, to the immense relief of the beleaguered garrisoit. So elated 
were the English, one soldier dashed from a sally port and scalped 
a dying Indian in full view of both sides. Swift came Indian ven- 
geance. Captain Campbell, the truce messenger, was hacked to 
pieces. By July 28, Dalzell has come from Niagara with nearly 
two hundred men, including Rogers, the famous Indian fighter. 
Both Dalzell and Rogers are mad for a rush from the fort to deal 
one crushing blow to the Indians. Here the one mistake of the 
siege was made. Gladwin was against all risk, for the Iftdians were 
now dropping off to the hunting field, but Dalzell and Rogers 
were for punishing them before they left. In the midst of a dense 
night fog the English sallied from the fort at two o'clock on the 
31st of July for Pontiac's main camp, about two miles up the 
river, boats rowing upstream abreast the marchers. It was hot 
and sultry. The two hundred and fifty bushrangers marched in 
shirt sleeves, two abreast. A narrow footbridge led across a 
brook, since known as Bloody Run, to cliffs behind which the 
Indians were intrenched. Along the trail were the whitewashed 
cottages of the French farmers, who stared from their windows 
in their nightcaps, amazed beyond speech at the rashness of the 



• 286 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

English. On a smaller scale it was a repetition of Braddock's 
defeat on the Ohio. Indians lay in ambush behind every house, 
every shrub, in the long grass. They only waited till Dalzeli's 
men had crossed the bridge and were charging the hill at a run. 
Then the war whoop shrilled both to fore and to rear. The Indians 
doubled up on their trapped foe from both sides. Rogers' Ran- 
gers dashed for hiding in a house. The drum beat retreat. Under 
cover of Rogers' shots from one side, shots from the boats on 
the other, Dalzeli's men escaped at a panic run back over the 
trail with a loss of some sixty dead. In September came more 
ships with more men, again to be ambushed at the narrows, and 
again to reach Detroit, as the old record says, " bloody as a 
butcher's shop." So the siege dragged on for more than a year 
at Detroit. Winter witnessed a slight truce to fighting, for star- 
vation drove the Indians to the hunting field ; but May saw Pon- 
tiac again encamped under the walls of Detroit till word came 
from the French on the lower Mississippi in October, definitely 
and for all, they would not join the Indians. Then Pontiac knew 
his cause was lost. 

Up at Michilimackinac similar scenes were enacted. Major 
Etherington and Captain Leslie had some thirty-five soldiers. 
There were also hosts of traders outside the walls, among whom 
was Alexander Henry of Montreal. Word had come of Pontiac 
at Detroit, but Etherington did not realize that the uprising 
was general. June 4 was the King's birthday. Shops had been 
closed. Flags blew above the fort. Gates were wide open. 
Squaws with heads under shawls sat hunched around the house 
steps, with that concealed beneath their shawls which the Eng- 
lish did not guess. All the men except Henry, who was writing 
letters, and some Frenchmen, who understood the danger signs, 
had gone outside the gates to watch a fast and furious game of 
lacrosse. Again and again the ball came bounding towards the 
fort gates, only to be whisked to the other end of the field by a 
deft toss, followed by the swift runners. No one was louder in 
applause than Etherington. The officers were completely off 
guard. Suddenly the crowds swayed, gave way, opened; . . . 



MICHILIMACKINAC FALLS 287 

and down the field towards the fort gates surged the players. 
A dexterous pitch ! The ball was inside the fort. After it dashed 
the Indians. In a flash weapons were grasped from the shawls 
of the squaws. Musket and knife did the rest. When Henry 
heard the war whoop and looked from a window he saw Indian 
warriors bending to drink the blood of hearts that were yet warm. 
For two days Henry lived in the rubbish heap of the attic in 
the house of Langlade, a pioneer of Wisconsin. Of the whites 
at Michilimackinac only twenty escaped death, and they were 
carried prisoners to the Lower Country for ransom. 

From Virginia to Lake Superior such was the Indian war 
known as Pontiac's Campaign. Fort Pitt held out like Detroit. 
Niagara was too strong for assault, but in September twenty- 
four soldiers, who had been protecting portage past the falls, 
were waylaid and driven over the precipice at the place called 
Devil's Hole. More soldiers sent to the rescue met like fate, 
horses and wagons being stampeded over the rocks, seventy men 
in all being hurled to death in the wild canyon. 

Amherst, who was military commander at this time, was 
driven nearly out of his senses. A foe like the French, who 
would stand and do battle, he could fight ; but this phantom foe, 
that vanished like mist through the woods, baffled the English 
soldier. In less than six months two thousand whites had been 
slain ; and Amherst could not even find his foe, let alone strike 
him. ''Can zve not inoculate them zvith smallpox, or set blood- 
Jionnds to track tJiem ?'' he writes distractedly. 

By the summer of 1764 the English had taken the war path. 
Bradstreet was to go up the lakes with twelve hundred men, 
Bouquet, with like forces, to follow the old Pennsylvania road to 
the Ohio, both generals to unite somewhere south of Lake Erie. 
Of Bradstreet the least said the better. He had done well in 
the great war when he captured Fort Frontenac almost without 
a blow ; but now he strangely played the fool. He seemed to 
think that peace, peace at any price, was the object, whereas 
peace that is not a victory is worthless with the Indian. Depu- 
ties met him on the 12th of August near Presqu' Isle, Lake Erie. 



288 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

They carried no wampum belts and were really spies.. Without 
demanding reparation, without a word as to restoring harried 
captives, without hostages for good conduct, Bradstreet entered 
into a fool's peace with his foes, proceeded up to Detroit, and 
was back at Niagara by winter ; though he must have realized 
the worthlessness of the campaign when his messengers sent to 
the Illinois were ambushed. 

When Bouquet heard of the sham peace he was furious and 
repudiated Bradstreet's treaty in toto. Bouquet was a veteran of 
the great war, and knew bushfighting from seven years' experi- 
ence on Pennsylvania frontiers. Slowly, with his fifteen hundred 
rangers and five hundred Highlanders, express riders keeping 
the trail open from fort to fort, scouts to fore. Bouquet moved 
along the old army trail used by Forbes to reach Fort Pitt. 
Friendly Indians had been warned to keep green branches as 
signals in the muzzles of their guns. All others were to be shot 
without mercy. Indians vanished before his march like mist 
before the sun. August 5 found Bouquet south of Fort Pitt at a 
place known as Bushy Run. The scouts had gone ahead to pre- 
pare nooning for the army at the Run. In seven hours the men 
had marched seventeen miles spite of sweltering heat ; but at 
one, just as the thirsty columns were nearing the rest place, the 
crack — crack — crack of rifle shots to the fore set every man's 
blood jumping. From quick march they broke to a run, priming 
guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later the old trick 
of Braddock's ambush was being repeated, but this time the 
Indians were dealing with a seasoned man. Bouquet swung his 
fighters in a circle round the stampeding horses and provision 
wagons. The heat was terrific, the men almost mad with thirst, 
the horses neighing and plunging and breaking away to the 
woods ; and the army stood, a red-coated, tartan-plaid target for 
invisible foes ! By this time the men were fighting as Indians 
fight — breaking ranks, jumping from tree to tree. It is n't easy 
to keep men standing as targets when they can't get at the foe ; 
but Bouquet, riding from place to place, kept his men in hand till 
darkness screened them. Sixty had fallen. A circular barricade 



HOW BOUQUET WINS VICTORY 



289 



was built of flour bags. Inside this the wounded were laid, and 
the army camped without water. The agonies of that night need 
not be told. ■ Here the neighing of horses would bring down a 
clatter of bullets aimed in the dark ; and the groans of the 
wounded, trampled by the stampeding cavalcade, would mingle 
with the screams of terror from the horses. The night continued 
hot almost as day in the sultry forest, and the thirst with both 
man and beast became 
anguish. Another such 
day and another such 
night, and Bouquet could 
foresee his fate would be 
worse than Braddock's. 
Passing from man to man, 
he gave the army their 
instructions for the next 
day. They would form in 
three platoons, with the 
center battalion advanced 
to the fore, as if to lead 
attack. Suddenly the 
center was to feign defeat 
and turn as if in panic 
flight. It was to be 
guessed that the Indians 
would pursue headlong. 
Instantly the flank bat- 
talions were to sweep through the woods in wide circle and 
close in on the rear of the savages. Then the fleeing center was 
to turn. The savages would be surrounded. Daybreak came 
with a cracking of shots from ambush. Officers and men carried 
out instructions exactly as Bouquet had planned. At ten o'clock 
the center column broke ranks, wavered, turned, . . . fled in 
wild panic ! With the whooping of a wolf pack in full cry, the 
savages burst from ambush in pursuit. The sides deployed. 
A moment later the center had turned to fight the pursuer, 




BOUQUET 



290 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



and the Highlanders broke from the woods, yelhng their slogan, 
with broadswords cutting a terrible hand-to-hand swath. Sixty 
Indians were slashed to death in as many seconds. . Though the 
British lost one hundred and fifteen, killed and wounded, the 
Indians were in full flight, blind terror at their heels. The way 
was now open to Fort Pitt, but Bouquet did not dally inside the 
palisades. On down the Ohio he pursued the panic-stricken 
savages, pausing neither for deputies nor reenforcements. At 
Muskingum Creek the Indians sent back the old men to sue, 
sue abjectedly, for peace at any cost. 

Bouquet met them with the stern front that never fails to win 
respect. They need not palm off their lie that the fault lay with 
the foolish young warriors. If the old chiefs would not control 
the young braves, then the whole tribe, the whole Indian race, 
must pay the penalty. In terror the deputies hung their heads. 
He would not even discuss the terms of peace. Bouquet declared, 
till the Indians restored every captive, — man, woman, and child, 
even the child of Indian parentage born in captivity. The captives 
must be given suitable clothing, horses, and presents. Twelve 
days only would he permit them to gather the captives. If man, 
woman, or child were lacking on the twelfth day, he would pur- 
sue them and punish them to the. uttermost ends of earth. 

The Indians were dumfounded. These were not soft words. 
Not thus had the French spoken, with the giving of manifold 
presents. But powder was exhausted. No more was coming from 
the French traders of the Mississippi. Winter was approaching, 
and the Indians must hunt or starve. Again the coureurs are 
sent spurring the woods from tribe to tribe with wampum belts, 
but this time .the belts are the white bands of peace. While 
Bouquet waits he sends back over the trail for hospital nurses to 
receive the captives, and the army is set knocking up rude bar- 
racks of log and thatch in the wilderness. Then the captives 
begin to come. It is a scene for the brush of artist, for all 
frontiersmen who have lost friends have rallied to Bouquet's 
camp, hoping against hope and afraid to hope. There is the 
mother, whose infant child has been snatched from her arms in 



RETURN OF CAPTIVES 



291 



some frontier attack, now scanning the lines as they come in, mad 
with hope and fear. There is the husband, whose wife has been 
torn away to some savage's tepee, searching, searching, search- 
ing among the sad, wild-eyed, ill-clad rabble for one with some 
resemblance to the wife 



he loved. There is the 
father seeking lost 
daughters and afraid of 
what he may find ; and 
there are the captives 
themselves, some of the 
women demented from 
the abuse they have re- 
ceived. England may 
have spent her millions 
to protect her colonies, 
but she never spent in 
anguish what these rude 
frontiersmen suffered at 
Bouquet's camp. 

So ended what is known 
as the Pontiac War. Up 
at Detroit in 1765 Pon- 
tiac, in council with the 
whites, explains that he 
has listened to bad ad- 
vice, but now his heart 
is right. " Father, you 
have stopped the rum 
barrel while we talked. 




RETURN OF THE ENGLISH CAPTIVES 
(From a contemporary print) 



he says grimly ; " as our business is 
finished, we request that you open the barrel, that we may drink 
and be merry." 

Not a very heroic curtain fall to a dramatic life. But pause a 
bit : the Pontiac War was the last united stand of a doomed 
race against the advance of the conquering alien ; and the Indian 
is defeated, and he knows it, and he acknowledges it, and he 



292 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

drowns his despair in a vice, and so he passes down the Long 
Trail of time with his face to the west, doomed, hopeless, 
pushed westward and ever west. 

Pontiac goes down the Mississippi to his friends, the French 
fur traders of St. Louis. One morning in 1767, after a drinking 
bout, he is found across the river, lying in camp, with his skull 
split to the neck. By the sword he had lived, by the sword he 
perished. Was the murder the result of a drunken quarrel, or did 
some frenzied frontiersman with deathless woes bribe the hand 
of the assassin .'' The truth of the matter is unknown, and Pon- 
tiac's death remains a theme for fiction. 

What with struggles for power and Indian wars, one might 
think that the few hundred Enghsh colonists of Quebec and 
Montreal had all they could do. Not so : their quarrels with 
the P'rench Catholics and fights with the Indians are merely 
incidental to the main aim of their lives, to the one object that 
has brought them stampeding to Canada as to a new gold field, 
namely, quick way to wealth ; and the only quick way to wealth 
was by the fur trade. In the wilderness of the Up Country wan- 
der some two or three thousand cast-off wood rovers of the old 
French fur trade. As the prodigals come down the Ottawa, 
down the Detroit, down the St. Lawrence, the English and 
Scotch merchants of Montreal and Quebec meet them. Mighty 
names those merchants have in history now, — McGillivrays and 
MacKenzies and McGills and Henrys and MacLeods and Mac- 
Gregors and Ogilvies and MacTavishes and Camerons, — but at 
this period of the game the most of them were what we to-day 
would call petty merchants or peddlers. In their storehouses — 
small, one-story, frame affairs — were packed goods for trade. 
With these goods they quickly outfitted the French bushrover 
— $3000 worth to a canoe — and packed the fellow back to the 
wilderness to trade on shares before any rival firm could hire him. 
Within five years of Wolfe's victory in 1759 all the French 
bushrovers of the Up Country had been reengaged by merchants 
of Montreal and Quebec. 



THE PEDDLERS 



293 



Then imperceptible changes came, — the changes that work 
so silently they are like destiny. Because it is unsafe to let 
the rascal bushrovers and voyageurs go off by themselves with 
$3000 worth to the canoe load, the merchants began to accom- 
pany them westward. " Bourgeois," the voyageurs call their out- 
fitters. Then, because success in fur trade must be kept secret, 
the merchants cease to have their men come down to Montreal. 
They meet them with the goods halfway, at La Verendrye's 




MONTREAL 
(From a contemporary print) 

old stamping ground on Lake Superior, first at the place called 
Grand Portage, then, when the United States boundary is changed 
in 1783, at Kaministiquia, or modern Fort William, named after 
William McGillivray. Pontiac's War puts a stop to the new 
trade, but by 1766 the merchants are west again. Henry goes 
up the Saskatchewan to the Forks, and comes back with such 
wealth of furs he retires a rich magnate of Montreal. The 
F'robisher brothers strike for new hunting ground. So do Peter 
Pond and Bostonnais Pangman, and the MacKenzies, Alexander 



294 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

and Roderick. Instead of following up the Saskatchewan, they 
strike from Lake Winnipeg northward for Churchill River and 
Athabasca, and they bring out furs that transform those ped- 
dlers into merchant princes. A little later the chief buyer of 
the Montreal furs is one John Jacob Astor of New York. Then 
another change. Rivalry hurts fur trade. Especially do differ- 
ent prices demoralize the Indians. The Montreal merchants pool 
their capital and become known as the Northwest Fur Company. 
They now hire their voyageurs outright on a salary. No man is 
paid less than what would be $500 in modern money, with 
board ; and any man may rise to be clerk, trader, wintering 
partner, with shares worth ^800 ($4000), that bring dividends 
of two and three hundred per cent. The petty merchants whom 
Murray and Carleton despised became in twenty years the opu- 
lent aristocracy of Montreal, holding the most of the public 
offices, dominating the government, filling the judgeships, and 
entertaining with a lavish hospitality that put vice-regal splen- 
dor in the shade. The Beaver Club is the great rendezvous of 
the Montreal partners. " Fortitude in Distress " is the motto 
and lords of the ascendant is their practice. No man, neither gov- 
ernor nor judge, may ignore these Nor'westers, and it may be 
added they are a law unto themselves. One example will suffice. 
A French merchant of Montreal took it into his head to have a 
share of this wealth-giving trade. He was advised to pool his in- 
terests with the Nor'westers, and he foolishly ignored the advice. 
In camp at Grand Portage on Lake Superior he is told all the coun- 
try hereabout belongs to the Nor'westers, and //r must decamp. 

" Show me proofs this country is yours," he answers. " Show 
me the title deed and I shall decamp." 

Next night a band of Nor'westers, voyageurs well plied with 
rum, came down the strand to the intruder's tents. They cut 
his tents to ribbons, scatter his goods to the four winds, and 
beat his voyageurs into insensibility. 

" Voila ! there are our proofs," they say. 

The French merchant hastens down to Montreal to bring law- 
suit, but the judges, you must remember, are shareholders in the 



METHODS OF NOR'WESTERS 295 

Northwest Company, and many of the Legislative Council are 
Nor'westers. What with real delays and sham delays and put- 
offs and legal fees, justice is a bit tardy. While the case is 
pending the French merchant tries again. This time he is not 
molested at Fort William. They let him proceed on his way up 
the old trail to Lake of the Woods, the trail found by La Veren- 
drye ; and halfway through the wilderness, where the cataract 
offers only one path for portage, the Frenchman finds Nor'- 
westers building a barricade ; he tears it down. They build 
another ; he tears that down. They build a third ; fast as he 
tears down, they build up. He must either go back bafifled by 
these suave, smiling, lawless rivals, or fight on the spot to the 
death ; but there is neither glory nor wealth being killed in the 
wilderness, where not so much as the sands of the shore will tell 
the true story of the crime. So the French merchant compro- 
mises, sells out to the Nor'westers at cost plus carriage, and 
retires to the St. Lawrence cursing British justice. 

It may be guessed that the sudden eruption of " the peddlers," 
these bush banditti, these Scotch soldiers of fortune with French 
bullies for fighters, roused the ancient and honorable Hudson's 
Bay Company from its half-century slumber of peace. Anthony 
Hendry, who had gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Black- 
foot country of the foothills, they had dismissed as a liar in the 
fifties because he had reported that he had seen Indians 071 Jiorse- 
back, whereas the sleepy factors of the bay ports knew very 
well they never saw any kind of Indians except Indians in 
canoes ; but now in the sixties it is noted by the company that 
not so many furs are coming down from the Up Country. It is 
voted " the French Canadian peddlers of Montreal " be notified 
of the company's exclusive monopoly to the trade of these regions. 
One Findley is sent to Quebec to look after the Hudson's Bay 
Company's rights ; but while the English company talks about 
its rights, the Nor'westers go in the field and take them. 

The English company rubs its eyes and sits up and scratches 
its heavy head, and passes an order that Mr. Moses Norton, chief 



296 c:anai)A: thk empire of the north 

factor of Churchill, send Mr. Samuel Hearne to explore the Up 
Country. Hearne has heard of Far-A way-Metal River, far enough 
away in all conscience from the Canadian peddlers ; and thither 
in December, 1770, he finds his way, after two futile attempts to 
set out. Matonabbee, great chief of the Chippewyans, is his 
guide, — Matonabbee, who brings furs from the Athabasca, and 
is now accompanied by a regiment of wives to act as beasts of 
burden in the sledge traces, camp servants, and cooks. Hearne 
sets out in midwinter in order to reach the Coppermine River 
in summer, by which he can descend to the Arctic in canoes. 
Storm or cold, bog or rock, Matonabbee keeps fast pace, so fast 
he reaches the great caribou traverse before provisions have 
dwindled and in time for the spring hunt. Here all the Indian 
hunters of the north gather twice a year to hunt the vast herds 
of caribou going to the seashore for summer, back to the Up 
Country for the winter, herds in countless thousands upon thou- 
sands, such multitudes the clicking of the horns sounds like wind 
in a leafless forest, the tramp of the hoofs like galloping cavalry. 
Store of meat is laid up for Hearne 's voyage by Matonabbee 's 
Indians ; and a band of warriors joins the expedition to go down 
Coppermine River. If Hearne had known Indian customs as 
well as he knew the fur trade, he would have known that it boded 
no good when Matonabbee ordered the women to wait for his 
return in the Athabasca country of the west. Absence of women 
on the march meant only one of two things, a war raid or hunt, 
and which it was soon enough Hearne learned. They had come 
at last, on July 12, 1771, on Coppermine River, a mean little 
stream flowing over rocky bed in the Barren Lands of the Little 
Sticks (Trees), when Hearne noticed, just above a cataract, the 
domed tepee tops of an Eskimo camp. It was night, but as bright 
as day in the long light of the North. Instantly, before Hearne 
could stop them, his Indians had stripped as for war, and fell 
upon the sleeping Eskimo in ruthless massacre. Men were 
brained as they dashed from the domed tents, women speared 
as they slept, children dispatched with less thought than the 
white man would give to the killing of a fly. In vain Hearne, 



TRADERS INVADE THE UP COUNTRY 



297 



with tears in his eyes, begged the Indians to stop. They laughed 
him to scorn, and doubtless wondered where he thought they 
yearly got the ten thousand beaver pelts brought to Churchill. 
A few days later, July 17, 1771, Hearne stood on the shores of 
the Arctic, heaving to the tide and afloat with ice ; but the hor- 
rors of the massacre had robbed him of an explorer's exultation, 
though he was first of pathfinders to reach the Arctic overland. 
Matonabbee led Hearne 
back to Churchill in June 
of 1772 by a wide west- 
ward circle through the 
Athabasca Bear Lake 
Country, which the Hud- 
son's Bay people thus 
discovered only a few 
years before the Nor'- 
westers came. 

No longer dare the 
Hudson's Bay Company 
ignore the Up Country. 
Hearne is sent to the 
Saskatchewan to build 
Fort Cumberland, and 
Matthew Cocking is dis- 
patched to the country 
of the Blackfeet, modern 
Alberta, to beat up trade, 
where his French voyageur, Louis Primeau, deserts him bag 
and baggage, to carry the Hudson's Bay furs off to the Nor'- 
westers. No longer does the English company slumber on the 
shores of its frozen sea. Yearly are voyageurs sent inland, — 
" patroons of the woods," given bounty to stay in the wilds, 
luring any trade from the Nor' westers. 




SAxMUKL HEARNE 



The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Ca- 
nadians, had barely been put in force before the Congress of the 



298 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

revolting English colonies sent up proclamations to be posted 
on the church doors of the parishes, calling on the French to 
throw off the British yoke, to join the American colonies, " to 
seize the opportunity to be free." Unfortunately for this allur- 
ing invitation, Congress had but a few weeks previously put on 
record its unsparing condemnation of the Quebec Act. Inspired 
by those New Englanders who, for a century, had suffered from 
French raids. Congress had expressed its verdict on the privi- 
leges granted to Quebec in these words: "TVc;;' re?;/ zue suppress 
our astonishniciit that a British Parliament should establish a 
religion that has drenched your island [England] /// bloody 
This declaration was the cardinal blunder of Congress as far 
as Canada was concerned. Of the merits of the quarrel the 
simple French habitant knew nothing. He did what his cure 
told him to do ; and the Catholic Church would not risk cast- 
ing in its lot with a Congress that declared its religion had 
drenched England in blood. English inhabitants of Montreal 
and Quebec, who had flocked to Canada from the New Eng- 
land colonies, were far readier to listen to the invitation of 
Congress than were the French. 

Governor Carleton had fewer than 800 troops, and naturally 
the French did not rally as volunteers in the impending war 
between England and her English colonies. Should the Con- 
gress troops invade Canada.? The question was hanging fire 
when Ethan Allen, with his two hundred Green Mountain boys 
of Vermont, marched across to Lake Champlain in May of 
1775, hobnobbed with the guards of Ticonderoga, who drank 
not wisely but too well, then rowed by night across the narrows 
and knocked at the wicket beside the main gate. The sleepy 
guards, not yet sober from the night's carouse, admitted the 
Vermonters as friends. In rushed the whole two hundred. In a 
trice the Canadian garrison of forty-four were all captured and 
Allen was thundering on the chamber door of La Place, the 
commandant. It was five in the morning. La Place sprang up. 
in his nightshirt and demanded in whose name he was ordered 
to surrender. Ethan Allen answered in words that have gone 



DISAFFECTION IN CANADA 299 

clown to history, "/// tJic name of tlic Great JcJiovali and tJic 
Continental Congress. '' Later fell Crown Point. So began the 
war with Canada in the great Revolution. 

And now, from May to September, Arnold's Green Mountain 
boys sweep from Lake Champlain down the Richelieu to the St. 
Lawrence, as Iberville's bold bushrovers long ago swept through 
these woods. However, the American rovers take no permanent 
occupation of the different forts on the falls of the Richelieu 
River, preferring rather to overrun the parishes, dispatching 
secret spies and waiting for the habitants to rally. And they 
came once too often, once too far, these bold banditti of the 
wilderness, clad in buckskin, musket over shoulder, coonskin 
cap ! Montreal is so full of spies, so full of friendlies, so full of 
Bostonnais in sympathy with the revolutionists, that Allen feels 
safe in paddling across the St. Lawrence one September morning 
to the Montreal side with only one hundred and fifty men. Mon- 
treal has grown in these ten years to a city of some twelve thou- 
sand, but the gates are fast shut against the American scouts ; and 
while Allen waits in some barns of the suburbs, presto ! out sallies 
Major Carden with twice as many men armed to the teeth, who 
assault the barns at a rush. Five Americans drop at the first crack 
of the rifles. The Canadians are preparing to set fire to the barns. 
Allen's men will be picked off as they rush from the smoke. Wisely, 
he saves his Green Mountain boys by surrender. Thirty-five capit- 
ulate. The rest have escaped through the woods. Carleton re- 
fuses to acknowledge the captives as prisoners of war. He claps 
irons on their hands and irons on their feet and places them on a 
vessel bound for England to be treated as rebels to the crown. It 
is said those of Allen's men who deserted were French Canadians 
in disguise — which may explain why Carleton made such severe 
example of his captives and at once purged Montreal of the dis- 
affected by compelling all who would not take arms to leave. 

Carleton's position was chancy enough in all conscience. The 
habitants were wavering. They refused point-blank to serve 
as volunteers. They supplied the invaders with provisions. 
Spies were everywhere. Practically no help could come from 



300 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

England till spring, and scouts brought word that two American 
armies were now marching in force on Canada, — one by way 
of the Richelieu, twelve hundred strong, led by Richard Mont- 
gomery of New York, directed against Montreal ; the other by 
way of the Kennebec, with fifteen hundred men under Benedict 
Arnold, to attack Quebec. Carleton is at Montreal. He rushes 
his troops, six hundred and ninety out of eight hundred men, 
up the Richelieu to hold the forts at Chambly and St. John's 
against Montgomery's advance. 

Half September and all October Montgomery camps on the 
plains before Fort St. John's, his rough soldiers clad for the 
most part in their shirt sleeves, trousers, and coon cap, with 
badges of " Liberty or Death" worked in the cap bands, or 
sprigs of green put in their hats, in lieu of soldier's uniform. 
Inside the fort. Major Preston, the English commander, has 
almost seven hundred men, with ample powder. It is plain to 
Montgomery that he can win the fort in only one of two ways, 
— shut off provisions and starve the garrison out, or get posses- 
sion of heavy artillery to batter down the walls. It is said that 
fortune favors the dauntless. So it was with Montgomery, for 
he was enabled to besiege the fort in both ways. Carleton 
had rushed a Colonel McLean to the relief of St. John's with 
a force of French volunteers, but the French deserted en masse. 
McLean was left without any soldiers. This cut off St. John's 
from supply of provisions. At Chambly Fort was a Major Stop- 
ford with eighty men and a supply of heavy artillery. Mont- 
gomery sent a detachment to capture Chambly for the sake of 
its artillery. Stopford surrendered to the Americans without a 
blow, and the heavy cannon were forthwith trundled along the 
river to Montgomery at St. John's. Preston sends frantic appeal 
to Carleton for help. He has reduced his garrison to half rations, 
to quarter rations, to very nearly no rations at all ! Carleton 
sends back secret express. He can send no help. He has no 
more men. Montgomery tactfully lets the message pass in. 
After siege of forty-five days, Preston surrenders with all the 
honors of war, his six hundred and eighty-eight men marching 



CANADA INVADED 



;oi 



out, arms reversed, and going aboard Montgomery's ships to 
proceed as prisoners up Lake Champlain. 

The way is now open to Montreal. Benedict Arnold, mean- 
while, with the army directed against Quebec, has crossed from 
the Kennebec to the Chaudiere, paddled across St. Lawrence 
River, and on the very day that Montgomery's troops take pos- 
session of Montreal, November 13, Arnold's army has camped 
on the Plains of Abraham behind Quebec walls, whence he scat- 
ters his foragers, ravag- 
ing the countryside far 
west as Three Rivers for 
provisions. The trials of 
his canoe voyage from 
Maine to the St. Law- 
rence at swift pace have 
been terrific. More than 
half his men have fallen 
away either from illness 
or open desertion. Arnold 
has fewer than seven hun- 
dred men as he waits for 
Montgomery at Quebec. 

What of Guy Carleton, 
the English governor, 
now.? Canada's case 
seemed hopeless. The 
flower of her army had 
been taken prisoners, and no help could come before May. Des- 
perate circumstances either make or break a man, prove or undo 
him. As reverses closed in on Carleton, like the wrestlers of old 
he but took tighter grip of his resolutions. 

On November 11, two days before Preston's men surren- 
dered, Carleton, with two or three military officers disguised as 
peasants, boarded one of three armed vessels to go down from 
Montreal to Quebec. All the cannon at Montreal had been 
dismounted and spiked. What powder could not be carried 




GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY 



302 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

away was buried or thrown into the river. Amid funereal 
silence, shaking hands sadly with the Montreal friends who had 
gathered at the wharf to say farewell, the English Governor left 
Montreal. That night the wind failed, and the three vessels lay 
to with limp sails. At Sorel, at Three Rivers, at every hamlet 
on both sides of the St. Lawrence, lay American scouts to cap- 
ture the English Governor. All next day the vessels lay wind- 
bound. Desperate for the fate of Quebec, Carleton embarked 
on a river barge propelled by sweeps. Passing Sorel at night, 
Carleton and his disguised officers could see the camp fires of 
the American army. Here oars were laid aside and the raft 
steadied down the tide by the rowers paddling with the palms 
of their hands. Three Rivers was found in possession of the 
Americans, and a story is told of Carleton, foredone from lack 
of sleep, dozing in an eating house or tavern with his head sunk 
forward upon his hands, when two or three American scouts 
broke into the room. Not a sign did the English party in peas- 
ant disguise give of alarm or uneasiness, which might have 
betrayed the Governor. " Come, come," said one of the Eng- 
lish officers in French, slapping Sir Guy Carleton carelessly on 
the back, "we must be going" ; and the Governor escaped un- 
suspected. November 19, to the inexpressible relief of Quebec, 
Carleton reached the capital city. 

Quebec now had a population of some five thousand. All 
able-bodied men who would not fight were expelled from the 
city. What with the small garrison, some marines who hap- 
pened to be in port, and the citizens themselves, eighteen hun- 
dred defenders were mustered. On the walls were a hundred 
and fifty heavy cannon, and all the streets leading from Lower 
to Upper Town had been barricaded with cannon mounted 
above. At each of the city gates were posted battalions. Sen- 
tries never left the walls, and the whole army literally slept in 
its boots. It will be remembered that the natural position of 
Quebec was worth an army in itself. On all sides there was 
access only by steepest climb. In front, where the modern vis- 
itor ascends from the wharf to Upper Town by Mountain Street, 



qup:bec invested 303 

steep as a stair, barricades had been built. To the right, where 
flows St. Charles River past Lower Town, platforms mounted 
with cannon guarded approach. To the rear was the wall behind 
which camped Arnold ; to the left sheer precipice, above which 



^v-tv sa\\\\ tUdvVes 



i' 



SHEWING CITY OF QUEBEC 

LIURING SIEGE BY CONGRESS TROOPS 
DEC- 1775 -MAY 1776 






v»._is» 






.^■^t: 




MAP ()F QUEBEC DURING SIEGE OF CONGRESS TROOPS 

the defenders had suspended swinging lanterns that lighted up 
every movement on the path below along the St. Lawrence. 

Early in December comes Montgomery himself to Quebec, 
on the very ships which Carleton had abandoned. Carleton 
refuses even the letter demanding surrender. Montgomery is 



304 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



warned that forthwith any messenger sent to the walls will come 
at peril of being shot as rebel. Henceforth what communication 
Montgomery has with the inhabitants must be by throwing proc- 
lamations inside or bribing old habitant women as carriers, — for 
the habitants continue to pass in and out of the city with provi- 
sions; and a deserter presently brings word that Montgomery has 
declared he will ^'•eat his Christmas dinner i?i Quebec or in Hell!'' 
Whereupon Carleton retorts, " He may choose his own place, 
but he shan't eat it in Quebec." 

Montgomery was now in the same position as Wolfe at the 
great siege. His troops daily grew more ragged ; many were 
without shoes, and smallpox was raging in camp. He could not 
tempt his foe to come out and fight ; therefore he must assault 
the foe in its own stronghold. It will be remembered, Wolfe had 
feigned attack to the fore, and made the real attack to the rear. 
Montgomery reversed the process. He feigned attack to the rear 
gates of St. John and St. Louis, and made the real attack to the 
fore from the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence. While a few 
soldiers were to create noisy hubbub at St. John and St. Louis 
gates from the back of the city, Arnold was to march through 
Lower Town from the Charles River side, Montgomery along 
the narrow cliff below the Citadel, through Lower Town, to that 
steep Mountain Street which tourists to-day ascend directly 
from the wharves of the St. Lawrence. On the squares of Upper 
Town the two armies were to unite and fight Carleton. The 
plan of attack practially encompassed the city from every side. 
Spies had brought rumors to Carleton that the signal for assault 
for the American troops was to be the first dark stormy night. 
Christmas passed quietly enough without Montgomery carrying 
out his threat, and on the night before New Year's all was quiet. 
Congress soldiers had dispersed among the taverns outside the 
walls, and Carleton felt so secure he had gone comfortably to 
bed. For a month, shells from the American guns had been 
whizzing over Upper Town, with such small damage that citizens 
had continued to go about as usual. On the walls was a constant 
popping from the sharpshooters of both sides, and occasionally 



MONTGOMERY'S FIGHT 



505 



an English sentry, parading the walls at imminent risk of being a 
target, would toss down a cheery " Good morrow, gentlemen," to 
a Congress trooper below. Then, quick as a flash, both men 
would lift and fire ; but the results were small credit to the aim of 
either shooter, for the sentry would duck off the wall untouched, 
just as the American dashed for hiding behind barricade or house 
of Lower Town. Some of the Americans wanted to know what 
were the lanterns and lookouts which the English had con- 
structed above the precipice of Cape Diamond. Some wag of a 
habitant answered these were the sign of a wooden horse with 
hay in front of it, and that the English general, Carleton, had 
said he would not surrender the town till the horse had caught 
up to the hay. Skulking riflemen of the Congress troops had taken 
refuge in the mansion of Bigot's former magnificence, the Intend- 
ant's Palace, and Carleton had ordered the cannoneers on his walls 
to knock the house down. So fell the house of Bigot's infamy. 

Towards 2 a.m. of December 31 the wind began to blow a 
hurricane. The bright moonlight became obscured by flying 
clouds, and earth and air were wrapped in a driving storm of 
sleet. Instantly the Congress troops rallied to their headquarters 
behind the city. Montgomery at quick march swept down the 
steep cliff of the river to the shore road, and in the teeth of a 
raging wind led his men round under the heights of Cape Diamond 
to the harbor front. Heads lowered against the wind, coonskin 
caps pulled low over eyes, ash-colored flannel shirts buttoned tight 
to necks, gun casings and sacks wrapped loosely round loaded 
muskets to keep out the damp, the marchers tramped silently 
through the storm. Overhead was the obscured glare where the 
lanterns hung out in a blare of snow above Cape Diamond. Here 
rockets were sent up as a signal to Arnold on St. Charles River. 
Then Montgomery's men were among the houses of Lower Town, 
noting well that every window had been barricaded and darkened 
from cellar to attic. Somewhere along the narrow path in front 
of the town Montgomery knew that barricades had been built 
with cannon behind, but he trusted to the storm concealing his 
approach till his men could capture them at a rush. At Pr^s 



3o6 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

cle Ville, just where the traveler approaching harbor front may- 
to-day see a tablet erected in memory of the invasion, was a bar- 
ricade. Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word 
that all was quiet and in darkness — the English evidently asleep; 
and uncovering muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at 
a run. But it was the silence that precedes the thunderclap. 
The English had known that the storm was to signal attack, and 
guessing that the rockets foretokened the assailants' approach, 
they had put out all lights behind the barricade. Until Mont- 
gomery's men were within a few feet of the log, there was utter 
quiet; then a voice shrieked out, "Fire! — fire!" Instantly a flash 
of flame met the runners like a wall. Groans and screams split 
through the muffling storm. Montgomery and a dozen others 
fell dead. The rest had broken away in retreat, — a rabble with- 
out a commander, — carrying the wounded. Behind the barricade 
was almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's 
defenders were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, 
and the first crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when 
half the guards would have thrown down their arms if one John 
Coffin, an expelled royalist from Boston, had not shouted out 
that he would throw the first man who attempted to desert into 
the river. 

Meantime, how had it gone with Arnold .? 

An English ofificer was passing near St. Louis Gate when, 
sometime after two o'clock, he noticed rockets go up from the 
river beyond Cape Diamond. He at once sounded the alarm. 
Bugles called to arms, drums rolled, and every bell in the city 
was set ringing. In less than ten minutes every man of Quebec's 
eighteen hundred was in place. American soldiers marching 
through St. Roch, Lower Town, have described how the tolling 
of the bells rolling through the storm smote cold on their hearts, 
for they knew their designs had been discovered, and they could 
not turn back, for a juncture must be effected with Montgomery. 
A moment later the sham assaults were peppering the rear gates 
of Quebec, but Guy Carleton was too crafty a campaigner to be 
tricked by any sham. He rightly guessed that the real attack 



" RATS IN A TRAP " 



307 



would be made on one of the two weaker spots leading up from 
Lower Town. " Now is the time to show what stuff you are 
made of," he called to the soldiers, as he ordered more detach- 
ments to the place whence came crash of heaviest firing. This 
was at Sault-au-Matelot Street, a narrow, steep thoroughfare, 
barely twenty feet from side tcj side. Up this little tunnel of a 
street Arnold had rushed his men, surmounting one barricade 
where they exchanged their own wet muskets for the dry guns 
of the English deserters, 
dashing into houses to get 
possession of windows as 
vantage points, over, some 
accounts say, yet another 
obstruction, till his whole 
army was cooped up in a 
canyon of a street directly 
below the hill front on 
which had been erected a 
platform with heavy guns. 
It was a gallant rush, but 
it was futile, for now Carle- 
ton outgeneraled Arnold. 
Guessing from the distance 
of the shots that the attack 
to the rear was sheer sham, 
the English general rushed 
his fighters downhill by an- 
other gate to catch Arnold on the rear. Quebec houses are built 
close and cramped. While these troops were stealing in behind 
Arnold to close on him like a trap, it was easy trick for another 
English battalion to scramble over house roofs, over back walls, 
and up the very stairs of houses where Arnold's troops were guard- 
ing the windows. Then Arnold was carried past his men badly 
wounded. "We are sold," muttered the Congress troops, "caught 
like rats in a trap." StiU they pressed foward in hand to hand 
scuffle, with shots at such close range the Boston soldiers were 




SIR GUY CARLETON 



3o8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

shouting, " Quebec men, do not fire on your true friends ! " with 
absurd pitching of each other by the scruff of the neck from the 
windows. DayHght only served to make plainer the desperate 
plight of the entrapped raiders. At ten o'clock five hundred 
Congress soldiers surrendered. It must not for one moment be 
forgotten that each side was fighting gallantly for what it believed 
to be right, and each bore the other the respect due a good fighter 
and upright foe. In fact, with the exception of two or three epi- 
sodes mutually regretted, it may be said there were fewer bitter 
thoughts that New Year's morning than have arisen since from 
this war. The captured Americans had barely been sent to 
quarters in convents and hospitals before a Quebec merchant 
sent them a gift of several hogsheads of porter. When the bod- 
ies of Montgomery and his fellow-comrades in death were found 
under the snowdrifts, they were reverently removed, and interred 
with the honors of war just inside St. Louis Gate. 

Though the invaders were defeated, Quebec continued to be 
invested till spring, the thud of exploding bombs doing little harm 
except in the case of one family, during spring, when a shell fell 
through the roof to a dining-room table, killing a son where he 
sat at dinner. As the ice cleared from the river in spring, both 
sides were on the watch for first aid. Would Congress send up 
more soldiers on transports ; or would English frigates be rushed 
to the aid of Quebec .'' The Americans were now having trouble 
collecting food from the habitants, for the French doubted the 
invaders' success, and Congress paper money would be worthless 
to the holders. One beautiful clear May moonlight night a vessel 
was espied between nine and ten at night coming up the river full 
sail before the wind. Was she friend or foe.'' Carleton and his offi- 
cers gazed anxiously from the citadel. Guns were fired as signal. 
No answer came from the ship. Again she was hailed, and again ; 
yet she failed to hang out English colors. Carleton then signaled 
he would sink her, and set the rampart cannon sweeping her bows. 
In a second she was ablaze, a fire ship sent by the enemy loaded 
with shells and grenades and bombs that shot off like a fusillade 
of rockets. At the same time a boat was seen rowing from the 



RELIEF AT LAST 



309 



far side of her with terrific speed. Carleton's precaution had pre- 
vented the destruction of the harbor fleet. Three days later, at 
six in the morning, the firing of great guns announced the com- 
ing of an EngUsh frigate. At once every man, woman, and child 
of Quebec poured down to the harbor front, half-dressed, mad 
with joy. By midday, Guy Carleton had led eight hundred sol- 
diers out to the Plains of Abraham to give battle against the 
Americans ; but General Thomas of the Congress army did not 
wait. Such swift flight was taken that artillery, stores, tents, 
uneaten dinners cooked 
and on the table, were 
abandoned to Carleton's 
men. General Thomas 
himself died of smallpox 
at Sorel. At Montreal all 
was confusion. The city 
had been but marking 
time, pending the swing 
of victory at Quebec. In 
the spring of 1776 Con- 
gress had sent three com- 
missioners to Montreal 
to win Canada for the 
new republic. One was 
the famous Benjamin 
Franklin, another a prom- 
inent Catholic ; but the French Canadian clergy refused to for- 
get the attack of Congress on the Quebec Act, and remained 
loyal to England. 

For almost a year, in desultory fashion, the campaign against 
Canada dragged on, Carleton reoccupying and fortifying Mont- 
real, Three Rivers, St. John's, and Chamby, then pushing up 
Champlain Lake in October of 1776, with three large vessels 
and ninety small ones. Between Valcour Island and the main- 
land he caught Benedict Arnold with the Congress boats on 
October 11, and succeeded in battering" them to pieces before 




BENEDICT ARNOLD 



3IO CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Arnold could extricate them. As the boats sank, the American 
crews escaped ashore ; but the English went no farther south than 
Crown Point this year. If Carleton had failed at Quebec, there 
can be no doubt Canada would have been permanently lost to 
England ; for the following year France openly espoused the 
cause of Congress, and proclamations were secretly smuggled 
all through Canada to be posted on church doors, calling on 
Canadians to remain loyal to France. Curiously enough, it was 
Washington, the leader of the Americans, who checkmated this 
move. With a wisdom almost prophetic, he foresaw that if France 
helped the United States, and then demanded Canada as her 
reward, the old border warfare would be renewed with tenfold 
more terror. No longer would it be bushrover pitted against 
frontiersmen. It would be France against Congress, and Wash- 
ington refused to give the aid of Congress to the scheme of 
France embroiling America in European wars. The story of how 
Clark, the American, won the Mississippi forts for Congress is 
not part of Canada's history, nor are the terrible border raids of 
Butler and Brant, the Mohawk, who sided \vith the English, and 
left the Wyoming valley south of the Iroquois Confederacy a 
blackened wilderness, and the homes of a thousand settlers smok- 
ing ruins. It is this last raid which gave the poet Campbell his 
theme in " Gertrude of Wyoming." By the Treaty of Versailles, 
in 1783, England acknowledged the independence of the United 
States, and Canada's area was shorn of her fairest territory by 
one fell swath. Instead of the Ohio being the southern boundary, 
the middle line of the Great Lakes divided Canada from her 
southern neighbor. The River Ste. Croix was to separate Maine 
from New Brunswick. The sole explanation of this loss to Can- 
ada was that the American commissioners knew their business 
and the value of the ceded territory, and the English commis- 
sioners did not. It is one of the many conspicuous examples of 
what loyalty has cost Canada. England is to give up the west- 
ern posts to the United States, from Miami to Detroit and 
Michilimackinac and Grand Portage. In return the United 
States federal uovernment is to recommend to the States 



TRICKS OF RINGSTERS 



I I 



Governments that all property confiscated from Royalists during 
the war be restored. 



General Haldimand, a Swiss who has served in the Seven 
Years' War, succeeds Carleton as governor in 1778. The times 
are troublous. There is still a party in favor of Congress. The 
great unrest, which ends in the French Revolution, disturbs 
the quiet waters of the 
habitants' life. Then that 
provision of the Quebec 
Act, by which legislative 
councilors were to be 
nominated by the crown, 
works badly. Councilors, 
judges, crown attorneys, 
even bailiffs are appointed 
by the colonial office of 
London, and find it more 
to their interests to stay 
currying favor in Lon- 
don than to attend to 
their duties in Canada. 
The country is cursed 
by the evil of absent 
officeholders, who draw 
salaries and appoint in- 
competent deputies to do the work. As for the social unrest that 
fills the air, Haldimand claps the malcontents in jail till the 
storm blows over ; but the tricks of speculators, who have flocked 
to Canada, give trouble of another sort. Naturally the ring of 
English speculators, rather than the impoverished French, be- 
came ascendant in foreign trade, and during the American 
war the ring got such complete control of the wheat supply 
that bread jumped to famine price. Just as he had dealt with 
the malcontents soldier fashion, so Haldimand now had a law 
passed forbidding tricks with the price of wheat. Like Carleton, 




GENER.AL H.ALDLM.AXD 



312 CANAl^A: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Haldimand too came down hard on the land-jobbers, who tried 
to jockey poor French peasants out of then- farms for baihff's 
fees. It may be guessed that Haldimand was not a popular gov- 
ernor with the English clique. Nevertheless, he kept sumptuous 
bachelor quarters at his mansion near Montmorency Falls, was 
a prime favorite with the poor and with the soldiers, and some- 
times deigned to take lessons in pickle making and home keep- 
ing from the grand dames of Quebec. In 1786 Carleton comes 
back as Lord Dorchester. 

Congress had promised to protect the property of those Roy- 
alists who had fought on the losing side in the American Revo- 
lution, but for reasons beyond the control of Congress, that 
promise could not be carried out. It was not Congress but the 
local governments of each individual state that controlled prop- 
erty rights. In vain Congress recommended the States Govern- 
ments to restore the property confiscated from the Royalists. 
The States Governments were in a condition of chaos, packed by 
jobbers and land-grabbers and the riffraff that always infest 
the beginnings of a nation. Instead of protecting the Royalists, 
the States Governments passed laws confiscating more property 
and depriving those who had fought for England of even holding 
ofifice. It was easy for the tricksters who had got possession of 
the loyalists' lands to create a social ostracism that endangered 
the very lives of the beaten Royalists, and there set towards 
Canada the great emigration of the United Empire Loyalists. 
To Nova Scotia, to New Brunswick, to Prince Edward Island, 
to Ontario, they came from Virginia and Pennsylvania and New 
York and Massachusetts and Vermont, in thousands upon thou- 
sands. The story of their sufferings and far wanderings has never 
been told and probably never will, for there is little ofificial 
record of it ; but it can be likened only to the expulsion of the 
Acadians multiplied a hundredfold. To the Maritime Provinces 
alone came more than thirty thousand people. To the eastern 
townships of Quebec, to the regions of Kingston and Niagara and 
Toronto in Ontario came some twenty thousand more. It needs no 



COMING OF LOYALISTS 313 

trick of fancy to call up the scene, and one marv^els that neither 
poet nor novelist has yet made use of it. Here were fine old Roy- 
alist officers of New York reduced from opulence to penury, from 
wealth to such absolute destitution they had neither clothing 
nor food, nor money to pay ship's passage away, now crowded 
with their families, and such wrecks of household goods as had 
escaped raid and fire, on some cheap government transport or fish- 
ing schooner bound from New York Harbor to Halifax or Fundy 
Bay. Of the thirteen thousand people bound for Halifax there 
can scarcely be a family that has not lost brothers or sons in the 
war. Family plate, old laces, heirlooms, even the father's sword 
in some cases, have long ago been pawned for food. If one 
finds, as one does find all through Nova Scotia, fine old mahogany 
and walnut furniture brought across by the Loyalists, it is only 
because walnut and mahogany were not valued at the time of 
the Revolution as they are to-day. And instead of welcome at 
Halifax, the refugees met with absolute consternation ! What is 
a town of five thousand people to do with so many hungry vis- 
itants.? They are cjuartered about in churches, in barracks, in 
halls knocked up, till they can be sent to farms. And these are 
not common immigrants coming fresh from toil in the fields of 
Europe ; they are gently nurtured men and women, represent- 
ing the aristocracy and wealth and conservatism of New York. 
This explains why one finds among the prominent families of 
Nova Scotia the same names as among the most prominent 
families of Massachusetts and New York. To the officers and 
heads of families the English government granted from two 
thousand to five thousand acres each, and to sons and daughters 
of Loyalists two hundred acres each, besides ^^3, 000, 000 in cash, 
as necessity for it arose. 

On the north side of Fundy Bay hardships were even greater, 
for the Loyalists landed from their ships on the homeless shores 
of the wildwood wilderness. Rude log cabins of thatch roof and 
plaster walls were knocked up, and there began round the log 
cabin that tiny clearing which was to expand into the farm. 
The coming of the Loyalists really peopled both New Brunswick 



314 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

and Prince Edward Island : the former becoming a separate 
province in 1784, named after the ruHng house of England ; the 
latter named after the Duke of Kent, who was in command of 
the garrison at Charlottetown. 

More strenuous still was the migration of the United Empire 
Loyalists from the south. Rich old planters of Virginia and 
Maryland, who had had their colored servants by the score, now 
came with their families in rude tented wagons, fine Chippen- 
dales jumbled with heavy mahogany furnishings, up the old 
Cumberland army road to the Ohio, and across from the Ohio 
to the southern townships of Quebec, to the backwoods of 
Niagara and Kingston and Toronto and modern Hamilton, and 
west as far as what is now known as London. I have heard 
descendants of these old southern Loyalists tell how hopelessly 
helpless were these planters' families, used to hundreds of negro 
servants and now bereft of help in a backwoods wilderness. It 
took but a year or so to wear out the fine laces and pompous 
ruffles of their aristocratic clothing, and men and women alike 
were reduced to the backwoods costume of coon cap, homespun 
garments, and Indian moccasins. Often one could witness such 
anomalies in their log cabins as gilt mirrors and spindly glass 
cabinets ranged in the same apartment as stove and cooking 
utensils. If the health of the father failed or the war had left 
him crippled, there was nothing for it but for the mother to take 
the helm ; and many a Canadian can trace lineage back to a 
United Empire Loyalist woman who planted the first crop by 
hand with a hoe and reaped the first crop by hand with a sickle. 
Sometimes the jovial habits of the planter life came with the 
Loyalists to Canada, and winter witnessed a furbishing up of 
old flounces and laces to celebrate all-night dance in log houses 
where partitions were carpets and tapestries hung up as walls. 
Sometimes, too, — at least I have heard descendants of the 
eastern township people tell the story, — the jovial habits kept 
the father tippling and card playing at the village inn while the 
lonely mother kept watch and ward in the cabin of the snow- 
padded forests. Of necessity the Loyalists banded together to 



LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS 



315 



help one another. There were " sugarings off" in the maple 

woods every spring for the year's supply of homemade sugar, 

— glorious nights and days in the spring forests with the sap 

trickling from the trees to the scooped-out troughs ; with the 

grown-ups working over the huge kettle where the molasses 

was being boiled to sugar; with the young of heart, big and 

little, gathering round the huge bonfires at night in the woods 

for the sport of a taffy pull, with molasses dripping on sticks 

and huge wooden spoons 

taken from the pot. There 

were threshings when 

the neighbors gathered 

together to help one 

another beat out their 

grain from the straw 

with a flail. There were 

" harvest homes " and 

"quilting bees" and 

"loggings" and "barn 

raisings." Clothes were 

homemade. Sugar was 

homemade. Soap was 

homemade. And for 

years and years the only 

tea known was made 

from steeping dry leaves 

gathered in the woods ; 

the only coffee made from burnt peas ground up. Such were 

the United Empire Loyalists, whose lives some unheralded 

poet will yet sing, — not an unfit stock for a nation's empire 

builders. 





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JOSEPH BKANl 



At the same time that the Loyalists came to Canada, came 
Joseph Brant, — Thayendanegea, the Mohawk, — with the rem- 
nant of his tribe, who had fought for the English. To them the 
government granted some 700,000 acres in Ontario. 



i6 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



It is not surprising- that the United Empire Loyahsts objected 
to Hving under the French laws of the Quebec Act. They had 
fought for England against Congress, but they wanted repre- 
sentative government, and the Constitutional Act was passed 
in 1 79 1 dividing the country into Upper and Lower Canada, 
each to have its own parliament consisting of a governor, a 
legislative council appointed by the crown, and an assembly 

elected by the people. 
There was to be no reli- 
gious test. Naturally old 
French laws would pre- 
vail in Quebec, English 
laws in Ontario or Upper 
Canada. By this act, too, 
land known as the Clergy 
Reserves was set apart for 
the Protestant Church. 
The first parliament in 
Quebec met in the 
bishop's palace in De- 
cember of 1792 ; the first 
parliament of Ontario in 
Newark or Niagara in 
September of the same 
year, the most of the 
newly elected members 
coming by canoe and dugout, and, as the Indian summer of 
that autumn proved hot, holding many of the sessions in shirt 
sleeves out under the trees. Lieutenant Governor Simcoe report- 
ing that the electors seem to have favored " men of the lower 
order, who kept but one table and ate with their servants." 
The earliest sessions of the Ontario House were marked by acts 
to remove the capital from the boundary across to Toronto, and 
to legalize marriages by Protestant clergymen other than of the 
English church. It is amusing to read how Governor Simcoe 
regarded the marriage bill as an opening of the flood gates to 




LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR SIMCOE 



LIFK IN THE BACKWOODS 317 

republicanism ; but for all their shirt sleeves, the legislators 
enjoyed themselves and danced till morning" in Navy Hall, the 
Governor's residence, "Mad Tom Talbot," the Governor's aid-de- 
camp, losing his heart to the fine eyes of Brant's Indian niece, 
daughter of Sir William Johnson of the old Lake George battle. 

Down at Quebec things were managed with more pomp, and 
no social event was complete without the presence of the Duke 
of Kent, military commandant, now living in Haldimand's old 
house at Montmorency. Nova Scotia had held parliaments since 
1758, when Halifax elected her first members. 

Besides the United Empire Loyalists, oth^ settlers were coming 
to Canada. The Earl of Selkirk, a patriotic young Scotch noble- 
man, had arranged for the removal of evicted Highlanders to 
Prince Edward Island in 1803 and to Baldoon on Lake St. Clair. 
Then " Mad Tom Talbot," Governor Simcoe's aid, descendant of 
the Talbots of Castle Malahide and boon comrade of the young 
soldier who became the Duke of Wellington, becomes so enamored 
of wilderness life that he gives up his career in Europe, gains 
grant of lands between London and Port Dover, and lays foun- 
dations of settlements in western Ontario, spite of the fact he 
remains a bachelor. The man who had danced at royalty's balls 
and drunk deep of pleasure at the beck of princes now lived in 
a log house of three rooms, laughed at difficulties, " baked his 
own bread, milked his own cows, made his own butter, washed 
his own clothes, ironed his own linen," and taught colonists who 
bought his lands "how to do without the rotten refuse of Man- 
chester warehouses," — the term he applied to the broadcloth of 
the newcomer. 

Under the French regime, Canada had consisted of a string of 
fur posts isolated in a wilderness. It will be noticed that it now 
consisted of five distinct provinces of nation builders. 



CHAPTER XIV 

FROM 1812 TO 1820 

While Canada waged war for her national existence against 
her border neighbors to the south, as in the days of the bush- 
rovers' raids of old, afar in the west, in the burnt-wood, iron-rock 
region of Lake Superior, on the lonely wind-swept prairies, at the 
foothills where each night's sunset etched the long shadows of 
the mountain peaks in somber replica across the plains, in the 
forested solitude of the tumultuous Rockies was the ragged van- 
guard of empire blazing a path through the wilderness, voyageur 
and burnt-wood runner, trapper, and explorer, pushing across 
the hinterlands of earth's ends from prairie to mountains, and 
mountains to sea. 

It was but as a side clap of the great American Revolution 
that the last French cannon were pointed against the English 
forts on Hudson Bay. When France sided with the American 
colonies a fleet of French frigates was dispatched under the 
great Admiral La Perouse against the fur posts of the English 
Company. One sleepy August afternoon in 1782, when Samuel 
Hearne, governor of Fort Churchill, was sorting furs in the court- 
yard, gates wide open, cannon unloaded, guards dispersed, the 
fort was electrified by the sudden apparition of three men-of-war, 
sails fuir blown, sides bristling with cannon, plowing over the 
waves straight for the habor gate. French colors fluttered from 
the masthead. Sails rattled down. Anchors were cast, and in a 
few minutes small boats were out sounding the channel for po- 
sition to attack the fort. Hearne had barely forty men, and the 
most of them were decrepits, unfit for the hunting field. As sun- 
set merged into the long white light of northern midnight, four 
hundred French mariners landed on the sands outside Churchill. 

3'8 



HEARNE SURRENDERS 319 

Hearne had no alternative. He surrendered without a blow. The 
fort was looted of furs, the Indians driven out, and a futile at- 
tempt made to blow up the massive walls. Hearne and the other 
officers were carried off captives. Matonabbee, the famous In- 
dian guide, came back from the hunt to find the wooden struc- 
tures of Churchill in flame. He had thought the English were 
invulnerable, and his pagan pride could not brook the shame of 
such ignominious defeat. Withdrawing outside the shattered 
walls, Matonabbee blew his brains out. A few days later Port 
Nelson, to the south, had suffered like fate. The English officers 
were released by La Perouse on reaching Europe. As for the fur 
company servants, they waited only till the French sails had dis- 
appeared over the sea. Then they came from hiding and re- 
built the burnt forts. Such was the last act in the great drama of 
contest between France and England for supremacy in the north. 

For two hundred years explorers had been trying to find a 
northern passage between Europe and Asia by way of America, 
from east to west. Now that Canada has fallen into English 
hands; now, too, that the Russian sea-otter hunters are coasting 
down the west side of America towards that region which Drake 
discovered long ago in California, England suddenly awakens 
to a passion for discovery of that mythical Northwest Passage. 
Instead of seeking from east to west she sought from west to 
east, and sent her navigator round the world to search for opening 
along the west coast of America. To carry out the exploration 
there was selected as commander that young officer, James Cook, 
who helped to sound the St. Lawrence for Wolfe, and had since 
been cruising the South Seas. On his ships, the Resolution and 
the Discovery^ was a young man whose name was to become a 
household word in America, Vancouver, a midshipman. 

March of 1778 the Resolution and Discovery come rolling over 
the long swell of the sheeny Pacific towards Drake's land of 
New Albion, California. Suddenly, one morning, the dim sky 
line resolved into the clear-cut edges of high land, but by night 
such a roaring hurricane had burst on the ships as drove them 



320 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



far out from land, too far to see the opening of Juan de Fuca, 
leading in from Vancouver Island, though Cook called the cape 
there " Flattery," because he had hoped for an opening and been 
deluded. Clearer weather found Cook abreast a coast of sheer 
mountains with snowy summits jagging through the clouds in 
tent peaks. A narrow entrance opened into a two-horned cove. 
Small boats towed the ships in amid a flotilla of Indian dug- 
outs whose occupants 
chanted weird welcome 
to the echo of the sur- 
rounding hills. Women 
and children were in 
the canoes. That sig- 
nified peace. The ships 
were moored to trees, 
and the white men went 
ashore in that harbor 
to become famous as 
the rendezvous of Pa- 
cific fur traders, Nootka 
Sound, on the sea side 
of Vancouver Island. 

Presently the waters 
were literally swarm- 
ing with Indian canoes, 
and in a few days 
Cook's crews -had re- 
ceived thousands of dollars' worth of sea-otter skins for such 
worthless baubles as tin mirrors and brass rings and bits of red 
calico. This was the beginning of the fur trade in sea otter with 
Americans and English. Some of the naked savages were ob- 
served wearing metal ornaments of European make. Cook did 
not think of the Russian fur traders to the north, but easily 
persuaded himself these objects had come from the English fur 
traders of Hudson Bay, and so inferred there vinst be a North- 
east Passage. By April, Cook's ships were once more afloat. 




CAPTAIN COOK 




FORT CHURCHILL AS IT WAS IN 1777 




'lOTEM PULES, BRIllSH COLUMBIA 



COOK ON WEST COAST 



321 



gliding among the sylvan channels of countless wooded islands 
up past Sitka harbor, where the Russians later built their fort, 
round westward beneath the towering opal dome of Mount St. 
Elias, which Bering had named, to the waters bordering Alaska ; 
but, as the world knows, though the ships penetrated up the 
channels of many roily waters, they found no open passage. 
Cook comes down to the Sandwich Islands, New Year of 1779. 
There the vices of his white crew arouse the enmity of the pagan 
savages. In a riot over the theft of a rowboat. Cook and a few 
men are surrounded by an enraged mob. By S(jme mistake the 
white sailors rowing out from shore fire on the mob surrounding 
Cook. Instantly a dagger rips under Cook's shoulder blade. In 
another second Cook and his men are literally hacked to pieces. 
All night the conch shells of the savages blow their war challenge 
through the darkness and the signal fires dance on the moun- 
tains. By dint of persuasion and threats the white men cf)mpel 
the natives to restore the mangled remains of the commander. 
Sunday, February 21, amid a silence as of death over the waters, 
the body of the dead explorer is committed to the deep. 

The chance discovery of the sea-otter trade by Cook's crew 
at Nootka brings hosts of English and American adv^enturers to 
the Pacific Coast of Canada. There is Meares, the English 
officer from China, who builds a rabbit hutch of a barracks at 
Nootka and almost involves England and Spain in war because 
the Spaniards, ha\'ing discovered this region before Cook, knock 
the log barracks into kindling wood and forcibly seize an Eng- 
lish trading ship. There is Robert Gray, the Boston trader, who 
pushes the prow of his little ship, Cobinibia, up a spacious harbor 
south of Juan de Fuca in May of 1792 and discovers Columbia 
River, so giving the United States flag prior claim here. There 
is George Vancouver, the English commander, sent out by his 
government in 1 791-1793 to receive Nootka formally back from 
the Spaniards of California and to explore every inlet from Van- 
couver Island to Alaska. As luck would have it, Vancouver, the 
Englishman, and Gray, the American, are both hcjvering oil 



0-^- 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



the mouth of the Cokimbia in April of 1792, but a gale drives 
the ships offshore, though turgid water plainly indicates the 
mouth of a great river somewhere near. Vancouver goes on up 
north. Gray, the American, comes back, and so Vancouver misses 
discovering the one great river that remains unmapped in Amer- 
ica. Up Puget Sound, named after his lieutenant, up Fuca 

Straits, round Vancou- 
ver Island, past all those 
inlets like seas on the 
mainland of British Co- 
lumbia, coasts Vancou- 
ver, rounding south 
again to Nootka in Au- 
gust. In Nootka lie the 
Spanish frigates from 
California, bristling with 
cannon, the red and yel- 
low flag blowing to the 
wind above the palisaded 
fort. In solemn parade, 
with Maquinna, the 
Nootka chief, clad in a 
state of nature, as guest 
of the festive board, 
Don Quadra, the Span- 
ish officer, dines and 
wines Vancouver ; but 
when it comes to busi- 
ness, that is another 
matter ! Vancouver understands that Spain is to surrender all 
sovereignty north of San Francisco. Don Quadra, with pomp- 
ous bow, maintains that the international agreement was to sur- 
render rights only north of Juan de Fuca, leaving the rest of 
the northwest coast free to all nations for trade. Incidentally, 
it may be mentioned, Don Quadra was right, but the two com- 
manders agree to send home to their respective governments for 




CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER 



VANCOUVER ON PACIFIC 



3^3 



instructions. Meanwhile Robert Gray, the American, comes 
roUing into port with news he has discovered Cokimbia River. 
Vancouver is skeptical and chagrined. Having failed to discover 
the river, he goes down coast to explore it. It may be added, 
he sends his men higher up the river than Gray has gone, and 
has England's flag of possession as solemnly planted as though 
Robert Gray had never entered Columbia's waters. The ne.xt 
two years Vancouver spends exploring every nook and inlet from 




NOOTKA SOUND 
(From an engraving in Vancouver's journal) 

Columbia River to Lynn Canal. Once and for all and forever 
he disproves the myth of a Northeast Passage. His work was 
negative, but it established English rights where America's 
claims ceased and Russia's began, namely between Columbia 
River and Sitka, or in what is now known as British Columbia. 
As the beaver had lured French bushrovers from the St. 
Lawrence to the Rockies, so the sea otter led the way to the ex- 
ploration of the Pacific Coast. Artist's brush and novelist's pen 
have drawn all the romance and the glamour and the adventure 
of the beaver hunter's life, but the sea-otter hunter's life is 



324 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

almost an untold tale. Pacific Coast Indians were employed by 
the white traders for this wildest of hunting. The sea otter is 
like neither otter nor beaver, though possessing" habits akin to 
both. In size, when full-grown, it is about the length of a man. Its 
pelt has the ebony shimmer of seal tipped with silver. Cradled on 
the waves, sleeping on their backs in the sea, playful as kittens, 
the sea otters only come ashore when driven by fierce gales ; 
but they must come above to breathe, for the wave wash of storm 
would smother them. Their favorite sleeping grounds used to 
be the kelp beds of the Alaskan Islands. Storm or calm, to 
the kelp beds rode the Indian hunters in their boats of oiled 
skin light as paper. If heavy surf ran, concealing sight and sound, 
the hunters stood along shore shouting through the surf and wait- 
ing for the wave wash to carry in the dead body ; if the sea were 
calm, the hunters circled in bands of twenty or thirty, spearing 
the sea otter as it came up to breathe ; but the best hunting was 
when hurricane gales churned sea and air to spray. Then the 
sea otter came to the kelp beds in herds, and through the storm 
over the wave-dashed reefs, like very spirits of the storm incar- 
nate, rushed the hunters, spear in hand. It is not surprising that 
the sea-otter hunters perished by tens of thousands every year, 
or that the sea otter dwindled from a yield of 100,000 a year 
to a paltry 200 of the present day. 

Meanwhile Nor' west traders from Montreal and Quebec, Eng- 
lish traders from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatche- 
wan far as the Athabasca and the Rockies. What lies beyond .? 
Whither runs this great river from Athabasca Lake ? Whence 
comes the great river from the mountains ? Will the river that 
flows north or the river that comes from the west, either of 
them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found wealth 
of sea otter ? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren. 
First you possess it, then it possesses you ! Cooped up in his fort 
on Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, be- 
gins wondering about those rivers, but you can't ask business men 
to bank on the Unknown, to write jjlank checks for profits on what 



DISCOVERY OF MACKKNZir: RIVER 



'■5 



you may not find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business 
men. For every penny's outlay they exacted from their winter- 
ing partners and clerks not ten but a hundredfold. And Alex- 
ander MacKenzie received no encouragement from his company 
to explore these unknown rivers. The project got possession of 
his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little log barracks of 
Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work out a 
way to explore those rivers ; or, sitting before the huge hearth 







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FORT CHU-PEWVAN, ATHABASCA LAKE 
(From a recent photograph) 



place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin 
Roderick, " I did not know what I was doing or where I was." 
Finally he induced his cousin to take charge of the fort for a 
summer. Then, assuming all risk and outlay, he set out on his 
own responsibility. June 3, 1789, to follow the Great River 
down to the Arctic Ocean. " English Chief," who often went 
down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as MacKen- 
zie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white 
men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make 
moccasins. 



326 CANADA: TIIK l^MPIRK OF THE NORTH 

The canoes passed Peace River pouring down from the moun- 
tains ; then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor' west voya- 
geur had perished, one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over 
the falls with a squaw, who swam ashore ; then rampart shores 
came, broader and higher than the St. Lawrence or the Hudson, 
the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted for sails through 
foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and rain-soaked, 
bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the Indians 
began to whine that the way was " hard, white man, hard." Then 
the river lost itself in a huge lagoon. Slave Lake, named after 
defeated Indians who had taken refuge here ; and the question 
was, which way to go through the fog across the marshy lake ! 
Poking through rushes high as a man, MacKenzie found a cur- 
rent, and, hoisting a sail on his fishing pole, raced out to the river 
again on a hissing tide. Here lived the Dog Rib Indians, and 
they frightened MacKenzie's men cold with grewsome tales of 
horrors ahead, of terrible waterfalls, of a land of famine and 
hostile tribes. The effect was instant. MacKenzie could not 
obtain a guide till " English Chief " hoisted a Slave Lake Indian 
into the canoe on a paddle handle. Though MacKenzie himself 
nightly slept with the vermin-infested guide to prevent desertion, 
the fellow escaped one night during the confusion of a thunder- 
storm. Again a chance hunter was forcibly put into the canoe 
as guide ; and the explorer pushed on for another month. North 
of Bear Lake, Indian warriors were seen flourishing weapons 
along shore, and MacKenzie's men began to remark that the land 
was barren of game. If they became winter bound, they would 
perish. MacKenzie promised his men if he did not find the sea 
within seven days, he would turn back. Suddenly the men lost 
track of day, for they had come to the region of long light. The 
river had widened to swamp lands. Between the 13th and 14th 
of July the men asleep on the sand were awakened by a flood of 
water lapping in on their baggage. What did it mean .? For a 
minute they did not realize. Then they knew. It was the tide. 
They had found the sea. Hilarious as boys, they jumped from 
bed to man their canoes and chase whales. 



ACROSS TO THE PACIFIC 






September 12, all sails up before a driving wind, the canoes 
raced across Athabasca Lake to the fort landing, Roderick, his 
nephew, shouting a welcome. MacKenzie had laid one of the two 
ghosts that haunted his peace. Now he must lay the other. 
Where did Peace River come from .? His achievement on Mac- 
Kenzie River had been greeted by the other Nor' west partners 
with a snub. Nevertheless MacKenzie asked for leave of absence 
that he might go to Lon- 
don and study the taking 
of astronomic observa- 
tions in order to explore 
that other river flowing 
from the mountains; and 
in London, though poor 
and obscure, he heard all 
about Cook's voyages 
and Meare's brush with 
the Spaniards at Nootka, 
and plans for Captain 
Vancouver to make a 
final exploration of the 
Pacific Coast. Hurrying 
back to the Nor'wester's 
fort on Peace River, he 
was beset by the blue 
devils of despondency. 
What if Peace River did not lead to the Pacific Ocean at all ? 
What if he were behind some other discoverer ? What if the 
venture proved a fool's trip leading to a blind nowhere ? He 
was only a junior partner and could ill afford either money or 
time for failure. 

Nevertheless, when the furs have been dispatched for Mon- 
treal, MacKenzie launches out on May 9 of 1793 with a thirty- 
foot birch canoe, six voyageurs, and Alexander Mackay as 
lieutenant, for the hinterland beyond the Rockies. This time the 
going was against stream, — hard paddling, but safer than with a 




ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 



328 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

swift current in a river with dangerous rapids. Ten days later 
the river has become a canyon of tumbling cascades, the moun- 
tains sheer wall on each side, with snowy peaks jagging up through 
the clouds. To portage baggage up such cliffs was impossible. 
Yet it was equally impossible to go on up the canyon, and Mac- 
Kenzie's men became so terrified they refused to land. Jumping 
to foothold on the wall, a towrope in one hand, an ax in the 
other, MacKenzie cut steps in the cliff, then signaled above the 
roar of the rapids for the men to follow. They stripped them- 
selves to swim if they missed footing, and obeyed, trembling in 
every limb. The towrope was warped round trees and the loaded 
canoe tracked up the cascade. At the end of that portage the 
men flatly refused to go on. MacKenzie ignored the mutiny and 
ordered the best of provisions spread for a feast. While the crew 
rested, he climbed the face of a rocky cliff to reconnoiter. As 
far as eye could see were cataracts walled by mighty precipices. 
The canoe could not be tracked up such waters. Mackay, who 
had gone prospecting a portage, reported that it would be nine 
miles over the mountain. MacKenzie did not tell his men what 
was ahead of them, but he led the way up the steep mountain, 
cutting trees to form an outer railing, and up this trail the canoe 
was hauled, towline round trees, the men swearing and sweating 
and blowing like whales. Three miles was the record that day, 
the voyageurs throwing themselves down to sleep at five in the 
afternoon, wrapped in their blanket coats lying close to the glacier 
edges. Three days it took to cross this mountain, and the end of 
the third day found them at the foot of another mountain. Here 
the river forked. MacKenzie followed the south branch, or what 
is now known as the Parsnip. Often at night the men would be 
startled by rocketing echoes like musketry firing, and they would 
spring to their feet to keep guard with backs to trees till morn- 
ing; but presently they learned the cause of the pistol-shot reports. 
They were now on the Uplands among the eternal snows. The 
sharp splittings, the far boomings, the dull breaking thuds were 
frost cornices of overhanging snow crashing down in avalanches 
that swept the mountain slopes clear of forests. 



A SMASH IN BAD RAPIDS 



,29 



A short portage from the Parsnip o\cr a low ridge to a lake, 
and the canoe is launched on a stream flowing on the far side 
of the Divide, Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though Mac- 
Kenzie mistakes it for an upper tributary of the great river dis- 
covered by Gray, the Columbia. Then, before they realize it, 
comes the danger of going ivith the current on a river with rap- 
ids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad and unbridled. The 
canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices racing past in 




CAUSE OF A PORTAGE 



a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels, bawling 
aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . . grasping, 
. . . snatching at trees overhanging from the banks. The next 
instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the 
stern. The canoe reels in a swirl. Bang goes a rock through 
the bow. The birch bark flattens like a shingle. Another swirl, 
and, to the amazement of all, instead of the death that had 
seemed impending, smashed canoe, baggage, and voyageurs are 
dumped on the shallows of a sandy reach. One can guess the 
gasp of relief that went up. Nobody uttered a word for some 



330 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

time. One voyageur, who had grasped at a branch and been 
hoisted bodily from the canoe, now came hmping to the discon- 
solate group, and had stumbled with lighted pipe in teeth across 
the powder that had been spread out to dry, when a terrific yell 
of warning brought him to his senses, and relieved the tension. 
MacKenzie spread out a treat for the men and sent them to 
gather bark for a fresh canoe. Other adventures on Bad River 
need not be given. This one was typical. The record was but 
two miles a day ; and now there was no turning back. The diffi- 
culties behind were as great as any that could be before. June 
15 Bad River led them wes-tward into the Eraser, but some- 
where in the canyon between modern Quesnel and Alexandria 
the way became impassable. Besides, the river was leading too 
far south. MacKenzie struck up Blackwater River to the west. 
Caching canoe and provisions on July 4, he marched overland. 
The Pacific was reached on July 22, 1793, near Bella Coola. 
By September, after perils too numerous to be told, MacKenzie 
was back at his fur post on Peace River. As his discoveries 
on this trip blazed the way to new hunting ground for his com- 
pany, they brought both honor and wealth to MacKenzie. He 
was knighted by the English King for his explorations, and he 
retired to an estate in Scotland, where he died about 1820. 

Meanwhile, Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the United States. 
The American explorers, Lewis and Clark, have crossed from 
the Missouri to the Columbia ; and now John Jacob Astor, the 
great fur merchant of New York, in 181 1 sends his fur traders 
overland to build a fort at the mouth of Columbia River. The 
Northwest Company in frantic haste dispatches explorers to 
follow up MacKenzie' s work and take possession of the Pacific 
fur trade before Astor's men can reach the field. It becomes a 
race for the Pacific. 

Simon Eraser is sent in 1806 to build posts west of the 
Rockies in New Caledonia, and to follow that unknown river 
which MacKenzie mistook for the Columbia, on down to the 
sea. Two years he passed building the posts, that exist to this 



DOWN FRASER RIVER 



day as Fraser planned them : Fort MacLeod at the head of 
Parsnip River, on a httle lake set like an emerald among the 
mountains ; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, a reach of sheeny 
green waters like the Trossachs, dotted with islands and en- 
sconced in mountains ; Fraser Fort on another lake southward ; 
Fort St. George on the main Fraser River. Then, in May of 
1808, with four canoes Fraser descends the river named after 
him, accompanied by 
Stuart and Quesnel and 
nineteen voyageurs. This 
was the river where the 
rapids had turned Mac- 
Kenzie back, canyon 
after canyon tumultuous 
with the black whirlpools 
and roaring like a tem- 
pest. Before essaying 
the worst runs of the 
cascades Fraser ordered 
a canoe lightened at the 
prow and manned by the 
five best voyageurs. It 
shot down the current 
like a stone from a cata- 
pult. "She flew from one 
danger to another," re- 
lates Fraser, who was 

watching the canoe from the bank, " till the current drove her 
on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our 
daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as 
we went down to their aid, our lives hanging on a thread." 
Like MacKenzie, Fraser was compelled to abandon canoes. 
Each with a pack of eighty pounds, the voyageurs set out on 
foot down that steep gorge where the traveler to-day can see 
the trail along the side of the precipice like basket work be- 
tween Lilloet and Thompson River. In Fraser's day was no 




SIMON FRASER 



332 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

trail, only here and there bridges of trembling twig ladders across 
chasms ; and over these swinging footholds the marchers had 
to carry their packs, the river rolling below, deep and. ominous 
and treacherous. At Spuzzum the river turned from the south 
straight west. Fraser knew it was not the Columbia. His men 
named it after himself. Forty days was Fraser going from 
St. George to tide water. Early in August he was back at his 
fur posts of New Caledonia. 

Yet another explorer did the Nor' westers send to take pos- 
session of the region beyond the mountains. David Thompson 




.ASTORIA IN IS 13 



had been surveying the bounds between the United States 
and what is now Manitoba, when he was ordered to explore 
the Rockies in the region of the modern Banff. Up on Canoe 
River, Thompson and his men Iniild canoes to descend the 
Columbia. Following the Big Bend, they go down the rolling 
milky tide past Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, a region of 
mountains sheer on each side as walls, with wisps of mist mark- 
ing the cloud line. Then a circular sweep westward through 
what is now Washington, pausing at Snake River to erect formal 
claim of possession for England, then a riffle on the current, a 






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MAP OF THE WEST COAST, SHOWING THE OGDEN AND ROSS EXPLORATIONS 



CAUSE OF WAR 333 

smell of the sea, and at i v.m. on July 15, 181 1, Thompson 
glides within view of a little raw new fort, Astoria. In the race 
to the Pacific the Americans have gained the ground at the 
mouth of the Columbia just two months before Thompson came. 
In Astor's fort Thompson finds old friends of the Northwest 
Company hired over by Astor. 

After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe 
the cause to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to 
the combustibles ; but the real reason usually lies far behind the 
one act of explosion, in an accumulation of ill feeling that pro- 
vided the combustibles. 

So it was in the fratricidal war of 18 12 between Canada and 
the United States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it 
was unnecessary. What caused it ? What accumulated the ill 
feeling lying ready like combustibles for the match } Let us see. 

The United Empire Loyalists have, by 18 12, increased to some 
100,000 of Canada's population, cherishing bitter memories of 
ruin and confiscation and persecution because Congress failed 
to carry out the pledge guaranteeing protection to the losing 
side in the Revolution. Then, because Congress failed to carry 
out //cr guarantee, England delayed turning over the western 
fur posts to the United States for almost ten years ; and whether 
true or false, the suspicion became an open charge that the hos- 
tility of the Indians to American frontiersmen was fomented by 
the British fur trader. 

Here, then, was cause for rankling anger on both sides, and the 
bitterness was unwittingly increased by England's policy. It was 
hard for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of 
the United States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in 
thought and speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even 
ground, looking on the level, eye to eye ; and not just a bumptious, 
underling nation, like a boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hec- 
tored and chaffed and bullied and badgered and licked into shape, 
as a sort of protectorate appended to English interests. 



334 



(^ANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



I once asked an Englishman why the EngUsh press was so 
virulently hostile to one of the most brilliant of her rising men. 

"Oh," he answered, "you must be English to understand 
that. We never think it hurts a boy to be well ragged when 
he 's at school." 

Something of that spirit was in England's attitude to the new 
nation of the United States. England was hard pressed in life- 
and-death struggle with Napoleon. To recruit both army and 
navy, conscription was rigidly and ruthlessly enforced. Yet 
more ! England claimed the right to impress British-born sub- 
jects in foreign ports, to seize deserters in either foreign ports 
or on foreign ships, and, most obnoxious of all, to search neutral 
vessels on the ocean highway for deserters from the British flag. 
It was an era of great brutality in military discipline. Desertions 
were frequent. Also thousands of immigrants were flocking to 
the new nation of the United States and taking out naturaliza- 
tion papers. England ignored these naturalization papers when 
taken out by deserters. 

Let us see how the thing worked out. A passenger vessel is 
coming up New York harbor. An English frigate with cannon 
pointed swings across the course, signals the American vessel 
on American waters to slow up, sends a young lieutenant with 
some marines across to the American vessel, searches her from 
stem to stern, or compels the American captain to read the 
roster of the crew, forcibly seizes half a dozen of the American 
crew as British deserters, and departs, leaving the Americans 
gasping with wonder whether they are a free nation or a tail to 
the kite of English designs. It need not be explained that the 
offense was often aggravated by the swaggering insolence of the 
young ofBcers. They considered the fury of the unprepared 
American crew a prime joke. In vain the government at Wash- 
ington complained to the government at Westminster. Eng- 
land pigeonholed the complaint and went serenely on her way, 
searching American vessels from Canada to Brazil. 

Or an English vessel has come to Hampton Roads to wood 
and water. An English officer thinks he recoo:nizes among the 



THE CHESAPEAKE OUTRAGE 335 

American crews men who have deserted from English vessels. 
Three men defy arrest and show their naturalization papers. High 
words follow, broken heads and broken canes, and the English crew 
are glad to escape the mob by rowing out to their own vessel. 

Is it surprising that the ill feeling on both sides accumulated 
till there lacked only the match to cause an explosion } The ex- 
plosion came in 1807. H. M. S. Leopai-d, cruising off Norfolk 
in June, encounters the United States ship CJiesapeake. At 
3 P.M. the English ship edges down on the American, loaded 
to the water line with lumber, and signals a messenger will be 
sent across. The young English lieutenant going aboard the 
Chesapeake shows written orders from Admiral Berkeley of Hali- 
fax, commanding a search of the CJiesapeake for six deserters. 
He is very courteous and pleasant about the disagreeable busi- 
ness : the orders are explicit ; he must obey his admiral. The 
American commander is equally courteous. He regrets that he 
must refuse to obey an English admiral's orders, but his own 
government has given most explicit orders that American ves- 
sels must not be searched. The young Englishman returns with 
serious face. The ships were within pistol. shot of each other, 
the men on the English decks all at their guns, the Americans 
off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as flash a 
cannon shot rips across the Chesapeake's bows, followed by a 
broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the Amer- 
ican decks to kindling wood before the astonished officers can 
collect their senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three 
wounded when the Chesapeake strikes her colors to surrender; 
but the Leopard does not want a captive. She sends her lieu- 
tenant back, who musters the four hundred American seamen, 
picks out four men as British deserters, learns that another 
deserter has been killed and a sixth has jumped overboard 
rather than be retaken, takes his prisoners back to the Leopard, 
which proceeds to Halifax, where they are tried by court-martial 
and shot. 

It is n't exactly surprising that the episode literally set the 
United States on fire with rage, and that the American President 






CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



at once ordered all American ports closed to British war vessels. 
The quarrel dragged on between the two governments for five 
years. England saw at once that she had gone too far and 
violated international law. She repudiated Admiral Berkeley's 
order, offered to apologize and pension the heirs of the victims ; 
but as she won hi not repudiate eitJicr the right of impressment or 

the right of search, the 
American government 
refused to receive the 
apology. 

Other causes fanned 
the flame of war. The 
United States was now 
almost the only nation 
neutral in Napoleon's 
wars. To cripple Eng- 
lish commerce, Napo- 
leon forbids neutral 
nations trading at Eng- 
lish ports. By way of 
retaliation England for- 
bids neutral nations 
trading with French 
ports ; and the United 
States strikes back by 
closing American ports 
to both nations. It 
means blue ruin to 
American trade, but 
the United States cannot permit herself to be ground between 
the upper and nether millstones of two hostile European powers. 
Then, sharp as a gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon re- 
vokes his embargo in 1810, which leaves England the offender 
against the United States. Then Governor Craig of Canada com- 
mits an error that must have delighted the heart of Napoleon, 
who always profited by his enemy's blunders. Well meaning, but 




GENER.AL SIR JAMES HENRY CRAIG, GOVERNOR 
GENERAL OF CANADA, 1807-1811 



WAR DECLARED 337 

fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John Henry from 
Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double pur- 
pose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of 
putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union 
in touch with British authorities. Craig goes home to England to 
die. Henry fails to collect reward for his ignoble services, turns 
traitor, and sells the entire correspondence to the war party in 
the United States for $10,000. That spy business adds fuel to 
fire. Then there are other quarrels. A deserter from the Amer- 
ican army is found teaching school near Cornwall in Canada. 
He is driven out of the little backwoods schoolhouse, pricked 
across the field with bayonets, out of the children's view, and 
shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an outrage almost 
the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the Chesa- 
peake. Also, in spite of apologies, the war ships clash again. 
The English sloop Little Belt is cruising off Cape Henry in May 
of 181 1, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears 
over the sea. The Little Belt pursues till she sights the com- 
modore's blue flag of the United States frigate President, 
then she turns about ; but by this time the President has 
turned the tables on the little sloop, and is pursuing to find 
out what the former's conduct meant. Darkness settles over 
the two ships beating about the wind. 

"What sloop is that.?" shouts an ofificer through a speaking 
trumpet from the American's decks. 

" What ship is tliat .?" bawls back a voice through the darkness 
from the little Englander. 

Then, before any one can tell who fired first (in fact, each ac- 
cuses the other of firing first), the cannon are pouring hot shot 
into each other's hulls till thirty men have fallen on the decks of 
the L^ittlc Belt. Apologies follow, of course, and explanations; 
but that does not remedy the ill. In fact, when nations and 
people want to quarrel, they can always find a cause. War is 
declared in June of 18 12 by Congress. It is war against Eng- 
land ; but that means war against Canada, though there are not 
forty-five hundred soldiers from Halifax to Lake Huron. As for 



338 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the American forces, they muster an army of some one hundred 
and fifty thousand; but their generals complain they are "an 
untrained mob "; and events justified the complaints. 



There is nothing for Canada to do but stand up to the war of 
England's making and fight for hearth and home. Canada on 
the defensive, there is nothing for the States to do but invade ; 
and the American generals don't relish the task with their 

" untrained mob." 

Upper Canada or Ontario 
has not four hundred soldiers 
from Kingston to Detroit 
River; but Major General 
Isaac Brock calls for volun- 
teers. The clang of arms, of 
drill, of target practice, re- 
sounds in every hamlet through 
Canada. At Kingston, at To- 
ronto, at Fort George (Ni- 
agara), at Erie where Niagara 
River comes from the lake, 
at Amherstburg, southeast 
,^^2_y ^-/y/ yy of Detroit, are stationed gar- 

— //iC-^x^-^— ^ risons to repel invasion, with 

wiLLi.vM HULL hastily erected cannon and 

mortar commanding approach 
from the American side. And invasion comes soon enough. The 
declaration of war became known in Canada about the 20th of 
June. By July 3 General Hull of Michigan is at Detroit with 
two thousand five hundred men preparing to sweep western 
Ontario. July 3 an English schooner captures Hull's provision 
boat coming up Detroit River, but Hull crosses with his army 
on July 12 to Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issues proclama- 
tion calling on the people to throw off the yoke of English rule. 
How such an invitation fell on United Empire Loyalist ears 
may be guessed. Meanwhile comes word that the Northwest 





HULL SURRENDERS AT DETROUr 339 

Company's voyageurs, with four hundred Indians, have captured 
Michihmackinac without a blow. The fall of Michilimackinac, 
the failure of the Canadians to rally to his flag, the loss of his 
provision boat, dampen Hull's ardor so that on August 8 he 
moves back with his troops to Detroit. Eight days later comes 
Brock from Niagara with five hundred Loyalists and one thou- 
sand Indians under the great chief Tecumseh to join Procter's 
garrison of six hundred at Amherstburg. The Canadians have 
come by open boat up Lake Erie from Niagara through furious 
rains ; but they are fighting for their homes, and with eager en- 
thusiasm follow Brock on up Detroit River to Sandwich, oppo- 
site the American fort. Indians come by night and lie in ambush 
south of Detroit to protect the Canadians while they cross the 
river. Then the cannon on the Canadian side begin a humming 
of bombs overhead. While the bombs play over the stream at 
Sandwich, Brock rushes thirteen hundred men across the river 
south of Detroit, and before midday of August 16 is marching 
his men through the woods to assault the fort, when he is met 
by an officer carrying out the white flag of surrender. While 
Brock was crossing the river, something had happened inside the 
fort at Detroit. It was one of those curious cases of blind panic 
when only the iron grip of a strong man can hold demoralized 
forces in hand. The American officers had sat down to break- 
fast in the mess room at day dawn, when a bomb plunged 
through the roof killing four on the spot and spattering the 
walls with the blood of the mangled bodies. Disgraceful stories 
are told of Hull's conduct. Ashy with fright and trembling, he 
dashed from the room, and, before the other officers knew what 
he was about, had offered to surrender his army, twenty-five hun- 
dred arms, thirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole 
state of Michigan. The case is probably more an example of 
nervous hysterics than treason, though the other American 
officers broke their swords with rage and chagrin, declaring they 
had been sold for a price. It was but the first of the many times 
the lesson was taught in this war, that however well intentioned a 
volunteer's courage may be, it takes a seasoned man to make war. 



;40 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Ten minutes later, a boy had climbed the flagstaff and hung out 
the English flag over Detroit. Of the captured American army 
Brock permitted the volunteer privates to go home on parole. 
The regulars, including Hull, were carried back prisoners on the 
boats to Niagara, to be forwarded to Montreal. At Montreal, 




MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON 
THE DETROIT RIVER 

Hull was given back to the Americans in exchange for thirty 
British prisoners. He was sentenced by court-martial to be shot 
for treason and cowardice, but the sentence was commuted. 



At Niagara River, where the main troops of Ontario were 
centered, Brock's victory was greeted with simply a madness of 
joy. From the first it had been plain that the principal fighting 
in Ontario would take place at Niagara, and along the river 
Brock had concentrated some si.xteen hundred volunteer troops, 



THE FIGHT ROUND NIAGARA 341 

raw farm hands most of them, with a goodly proportion of de- 
scendants from the United Empire Loyalists, who had furbished 
out their fathers' swords. But the army was in rags and tatters ; 
many men had no shoes ; before Brock captured the guns at 
Detroit there had not been muskets to go round the men, and 
there were not cannon enough to mount the batteries cast up 
along Niagara River facing the American defenses. As the 
boats came down Lake Erie and disembarked the American 
prisoners on August 24, at Fort Erie on the Canadian side, 'oppo- 
site Black Rock and Buffalo, wild yells of jubilation rent the 
air. By nightfall every camp on the Canadian side for the 
whole forty miles of Niagara River's course echoed to shout 
and counter shout, and a wild refrain which some poet of the 
haversack had composed on the spot : 

We '11 subdue the mighty Democrats and pull their dwellings down, 
And have the States inhabited with subjects of the Crown. 

Take a survey of the Niagara region. South is Lake Erie, 
north is Lake Ontario, between them Niagara River flowing 
almost straight north through a steep dark gorge hewn out of 
the solid rock by the living waters of all the Upper Lakes, 
crushed and cramped, carving a turbulent way through this 
narrow canyon. Midway in the river's course the blue waters 
begin to race. The race becomes a dizzy madness of blurred, 
whirling, raging waters. Then there is the leap, the plunge, the 
shattering anger of inland seas hurling their strength over the 
sheer precipice in resistless force. Then the foaming whirlpool 
below, and the shadowy gorge, and the undercurrent eddying 
away in the swift-flowing waters of the river coming out on Lake 
Ontario. On one side are the Canadian forts, on the other the 
American, slab-walled all of them, with scarcely a stone founda- 
tion except in bastions used as powder magazines. Fort Erie on 
the Canadian side faces Buffalo and Black Rock on the Amer- 
ican side. Where the old French voyageurs used to portage past 
the Falls, about halfway on the Canadian side south of the 
precipice, is the village of Chippewa. Here Brock has stationed 



34^ 



CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



a garrison with cannon. Then halfway between the Falls and 
Lake Ontario are high cliffs known as Queenston Heights, in 
plain view of the American town of Lewiston on the other side. 
Cannon line the river cliffs on both sides here. All about Lewis- 
ton the fields are literally white with the tents of General Van 

Rensselaer's army, now 
grown from twenty-five 
hundred to almost eight 
thousand. On the Cana- 
dian side cannon had 
been mounted on the 
cliffs known as Queens- 
ton Heights. Possibly 
because the two hundred 
men would make poor 
showing in tents, Brock 
has his soldiers here take 
cjuarters in the farm- 
houses. For the rest it 
is such a rural scene as 
one may witness any 
midsummer, — rolling 
yellow wheat fields sur- 
rounded by the zigzag 
rail fences, with square 
farmhouses of stone and 
the fields invariably 
backed by the uncleared 
bush land. Six miles far- 
ther down the river, 
where the waters join 
Lake Ontario, is the English post, Fort George, near the old 
capital, Newark, and just opposite the American fort of Niagara. 
With the exception of the Grand Island region on the river, it 
may be said that both armies are in full view of each other. 
Sometimes, when to the tramp — tramp — tramp of the sentry's 




MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY 
OPERATIONS ON THE NIAGARA FRONTIER 



SOLDIERS EXCHANGE JOKES ACROSS GORGE 343 

tread a loud " All 's well " echoes across the river from Lewiston 
to the Canadian side, some wag at Queenston will take up the 
cry through the dark and bawl back, "All 's well here too "; and 
all night long the two sentries bawl back and forward to each 
other through the dark. Sometimes, too, though strictest orders 
are issued against such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer 
and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the 
dark. Drums beat reveille at four in the morning, and the rub-a- 
dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too of Lewis- 
ton, though river mist hides the armies from each other in the 
morning. Iron baskets filled with oiled bark are used as tele- 
graph signals, and one may guess how, when the light flared up 
of a night on the Canadian heights, scouts carried word to the 
officers on the American side. One may guess, too, the effect 
on Van Rensselaer's big untrained army, when, with the sun 
aglint on scarlet uniform, they saw their fellow-countrymen of 
Detroit marched prisoners between British lines along the heights 
of Queenston opposite Lewiston. Rage, depression, shame, knew 
no bounds ; and the army was unable to vent anger in heroic at- 
tack, for England had repealed her embargo laws, and when 
Brock came back from Detroit he found that an armistice had 
been arranged, and both sides had been ordered to suspend 
hostilities till instructions came from the governments. The 
truce, it may be added, was only an excuse to enable both sides 
to complete preparations for the war. In a few weeks ball and 
bomb were again singing their shrill songs in mid-air. 

Brock's victory demoralized the rabble under the American 
Van Rensselaer. Desertions increased daily, and discipline was 
so notoriously bad Van Rensselaer and his staff dared not punish 
desertion for fear of the army ^ as one of them put it — "fall- 
ing to pieces." Van Rensselaer saw that he must strike, and 
strike at once, and strike successfully, or he would not have any 
army left at all. Tv.'o thousand Pennsylvanians had joined him ; 
and on October 9, at one in the morning, Lieutenant Elliott led 
one hundred men with muffled paddles from the American side to 
two Canadian ships lying anchored off Fort Erie. One was the 



344 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

brig captured from Hull at Detroit, the other a sloop belonging 
to the Northwest Fur Company, loaded with peltries. Before the 
British were well awake, Elliott had boarded decks, captured 
the fur ship with forty prisoners, and was turning her guns on 
the other ship when Fort Erie suddenly awakened with a belch 
of cannon shot. The Americans cut the cables and drifted on the 
captured ship downstream. The fur ship was worked safely over 
to the American side, where it was welcomed with wild cheers. 
The brig was set on fire and abandoned. 

Van Rensselaer decided to take advantage of the elated spirit 
among the troops and invade Canada at once. 

Over on the Canadian side. Brock, at Fort George, wanted to 
offer an exchange of Detroit prisoners for the voyageurs on the 
captured fur ship, and Evans was ordered to paddle across to 
Lewiston with the offer, white handkerchief fluttering as a flag 
of truce. Evans could not mistake the signs as he landed on the 
American shore. Sentries dashed down to stop his advance at 
bayonet point. He was denied speech with Van Rensselaer and 
refused admittance to the American camp ; and the reason was 
plain. A score of boats, capable of holding thirty men each, lay 
moored at the Lewiston shore. Along the rain-soaked road be- 
hind the shore floundered and marched troops, fresh troops join- 
ing Van Rensselaer's camp. It was dark before Evans returned 
to Oueenston Heights and close on midnight when he reached 
Major General Brock at Fort George. Brock thought Evans 
over an.xious, and both went to bed, or at least threw themselves 
down on a mattress to sleep. At two o 'clock they were awakened 
by a sound which could not be mistaken, — the thunderous boom- 
ing of a furious cannonade from Queenston Heights. Brock 
realized that the two hundred Canadians on the cliff must be re- 
pelling an invasion, but he was suspicious that the attack from 
Lewiston was a feint to draw off attention from Fort Niagara 
opposite Fort George, and he did not at once order troops to the 
aid of Queenston Heights. 

Evans' predictions of invasion were only too true. After one 
attempt to cross the gorge, which was balked by storm, Van 



THE TRAVERSE AT OUEENSTON 



345 



Rensselaer finally got his troops clown to the water's edge about 
midnight of October 12-13. The night was dark, moonless, rainy, 
— a wind which mingled with the roar of the river drowning all 
sound of marching troops. Three hundred men embarked on the 
first passage of the boats across the swift river, the poor old pilot 
literally groaning aloud in terror. Three of the boats were car- 
ried beyond the landing 
on the Canadian side, 
and had to come back 
through the dark to get 
their bearings ; but the 
rest, led by Van Rensse- 
laer, had safely landed 
on the Canadian side, 
when the batteries of 
Queenston Heights 
flashed to life in sheets 
of fire, lighting up the 
dark tide of the river 
gorge and sinking half 
a dozen boat loads of men 
now coming on a sec- 
ond traverse. Instantly 
Lewiston' s cannon pealed 
furious answer to the 
Canadian fire, and in the 
sheet-lightning flame of 
the flaring batteries thousands could be seen on the American 
shore watching the conflict. As the Americans landed they 
hugged the rock cliff for shelter, but the mortality on the cross- 
ing boats was terrible ; and each passage carried back quota of 
wounded. Van Rensselaer was shot in the thigh almost as he 
landed, but still he held his men in hand. A second shot pierced 
the same side. A third struck his knee. Six wounds he received 
in as many seconds ; and he was carried back in the boats to the 
Lewiston side. Then began a mad scramble through the darkness 




GENERAL BROCK 



346 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

up a fisherman's path steep as trail of mountain goat, sheer 
against the face of the cHff. When day dawned misty and gray 
over tlie black tide of the rolling river, the Canadian batterymen 
of Queenston Heights were astounded to see American sharp- 
shooters mustered on the cliff behind and above them. A 
quick rush, and the Canadian batterymen were driven from 
their ground, the Canadian cannon silenced, and while wild 
shoutings of triumph rose from the spectators at Lewiston, the 
American boats continued to pour soldiers across the river. 

It was at this stage Brock came riding from Fort George so 
spattered with mud from head to heel he was not recognized 
by the soldiers. One glance was enough. The Canadians had 
lost the day. Sending messengers to bid General Sheaffe hurry 
the troops from Fort George, and other runners to bring up the 
troops from Chippewa behind the Americans on Queenston 
Heights, Brock charged up the hill amid shriek of bombs and 
clatter of sharpshooters. He had dismounted and was scram- 
bling over a stone wall. "Follow me, boys! " he shouted to the 
British grenadiers ; then at the foot of the hill, waving his sword: 
"Now take a breath; you will need it ! Come on ! come on !" and 
he led the rush of two hundred men in scarlet coats to dislodge 
the Americans. A shot pierced his wrist. " Push on, York volun- 
teers," he shouted. His portly figure in scarlet uniform was 
easy mark for the sharpshooters hidden in the brush of Queens- 
ton Heights. One stepped deliberately out and took aim. 
Though a dozen Canadian muskets flashed answer, Brock fell, 
shot through the breast, dying with the words on his lips, " My 
fall must not be noticed to stop the victory." Major Macdon- 
nell led in the charge up the hill, but the ne.xt moment his 
horse plunged frantically, and he reeled from the saddle fatally 
wounded. For a second time the British were repulsed, and the 
Americans had won the Heights, if not the day. 

The inv^aders were resting on their arms, snatching a breakfast 
of biscuit and cheese about midday, when General Sheaffe ar- 
rived from Fort George with troops breathless from running. A 
heart-shattering huzza from the villae:e warned the Americans 



THE SURRENDER AT QUEENSTON 



347 



that help had come, and they were to arms in a second; but 
Sheaffe had swept round the Heights, Indians on one side of the 
hill, soldiers on the other, and came on the surprised Americans 
as from the rear. There was a wild whoop, a dash up the hill, a 
pause to fire, when the air was splinted by nine hundred instan- 
taneous shots. Then through the smoke the British rushed the 
Heights at bayonet point. For three hours the contest raged 
in full sight of Lewiston, 
a hand-to-hand butchery 
between Sheaffe's fresh 
fighters and the Ameri- 
cans, who had been on 
their feet since midnight. 
Indian tomahawk played 
its part, but it is a ques- 
tion if the scalping knife 
did as deadly work as 
the grenadier's long bay- 
onets. Cooped up be- 
tween the enemy and the 
precipice, the American 
sharpshooters waited for 
the help that never came. 
In vain Van Rensselaer's 
officers prayed and swore 
and pleaded with the 
volunteer troops on the 
Lewiston side. The men 
flatly refused to cross ; for boat loads of mangled bodies were 
brought back at each passage. Discipline fell to pieces. It was 
the old story of volunteers, brave enough at a spurt, going to 
pieces in panic under hard and continued strain. Driven from 
Queenston Heights, the invaders fought their way down the cliff 
path by inches to the water side, and there . . . there were no 
boats ! Pulling off his white necktie, an officer held it up on the 
point of his sword as signal of surrender. It was one of the most 




BROCK MONUIVIENT, QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 



348 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

gallant fights on both sides in Canadian history, though officers 
over on the Lewiston shore were crying like boys at the sight 
of nine hundred Americans surrendering. 

Truce was then arranged for the burial of the dead. The 
bodies of Brock and Macdonnell were laid on a gun wagon and 
conveyed between lines of sorrowing soldiers, with arms reversed, 
to the burial place outside Fort George. As the regimental 
music rang out the last march of the two dead officers, minute 
guns were fired in sympathy all along the American shore. 
" He would have done as much for us," said the American 
officers of the gallant Brock. 

Van Rensselaer at once resigns. "Proclamation " Smyth, whose 
addresses resemble Fourth of July backwoods orations, succeeds 
as commander of the American army; but " Proclamation" Smyth 
makes such a mess of a raid on Fort Erie, retreating with a haste 
suggestive of Hull at Detroit, that he is mobbed when he returns 
to the United States shore. But what the United States lose 
by land, they retrieve by sea. England's best ships are engaged 
in the great European war. From June to December, United 
States vessels sweep the sea ; but this is more a story of the 
English navy than of Canada. The year of 1812 closes with the 
cruisers of Lake Ontario chasing each other through many a 
wild snowstorm. 

As the year 18 12 proved one of jubilant victory for Canada, 
so 18 13 was to be one of black despair. With the exception of 
four brilliant victories wrested in the very teeth of defeat, the 
year passes down to history as one of the darkest in the annals 
of the country. The population of the United States at this 
time was something over seven millions, and it was not to be 
thought for one moment that a nation of this strength would 
remain beaten off the field by the little province of Ontario 
(Upper Canada) , whose population numbered barely ninety 
thousand. General Harrison hurries north from the Wabash 
with from six to eight thousand men to retrieve the defeat of 
Detroit. At Presqu' Isle, on Lake Erie, hammer and mallet and 



1813 A DARK YEAR 



349 



forging iron are heard all winter preparing the fleet for Commo- 
dore Perry that is to command Lake Erie and the Upper Lakes 
for the Americans. At Sackett's Harbor similar preparations 
are under way on a fleet for Chauncey to sweep the English 
from Lake Ontario ; and all along both sides of the St. Law- 
rence, as winter hedged the waters with ice, lurk scouts, — the 
Americans, for the most part, uniformed in blue, the Canadians 
in Lincoln green with gold braid, — watching chance for raid 
and counter raid during the winter nights. The story of these 
thrilling raids will probably pass into the shadowy realm of leg- 
end handed down from father to son, for few of them have been 
embodied in the official reports. 

From being hard pressed on the defensive, Canada has sud- 
denly sprung into the position of jubilant victor, and if Brock 
had lived, she would probably have followed up her victories by 
aggressive invasion of the enemy's territory ; but all effort was 
literally paralyzed by the timidity and vacillation of the gov- 
ernor general. Sir George Prevost. Prevost's one idea seems to 
have been that as soon as the obnoxious embargo laws were 
revoked by England, the war would stop. When the embargo 
was revoked and the armistice of midsummer simply termi- 
nated in a resumption of war, this idea seems to have been suc- 
ceeded by the single aim to hold off conclusions with the United 
States till England could beat Napoleon and come to the rescue. 
All winter long scouts and bold spirits among the volunteers 
craved the chance to raid the anchored fleets of Lake Ontario 
and Lake Erie, but Prevost not only forbade the invasion of the 
enemy's territory, but before the year was out actually advocated 
the abandonment of Ontario. If his advice had been followed, 
it is no idle supposition to infer that the fate of Ontario \Vould 
have been the same as the destiny of the Ohio and Michigan. 

One night in February the sentry at the village of Brockville, 
named after the dead hero, was surprised by two hundred Amer- 
ican raiders dashing up from the frozen river bed. Before bugles 
could sound to arms, jails had been opened, stores looted, houses 



350 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

plundered, and the raiders were off and well away with fifty-two 
prisoners and a dozen sleigh loads of provisions. Gathering 
some five hundred men together from the Kingston region, 
M'Donnell and Jenkins of the Glengarrys prepared to be re- 
venged. Cannon were hauled out on the river from the little 
village of Prcscott to cross the ice to Ogdensburg. The river 
here is almost two miles wide, and as it was the 23d of Feb- 
ruary, the ice had become rotten from the sun glare of the com- 
ing spring. As the cannon were drawn to mid-river, though it 
was seven in the morning, the ice began to heave and crack with 
dire warning. To hesitate was death ; to go back as dangerous 
as to go forward. With a whoop the men broke from quick 
march to a run, unsheathing musket and fixing bayonet blades 
as they dashed ahead to be met with a withering cross fire as 
they came within range of the American batteries. In places, 
the suck of the water told where the ice had given behind. Then 
bullets were peppering the river bed in a rain of fire, Jenkins 
and M'Donnell to the fore, waving their swords. Then bombs 
began to ricochet over the ice. If the range of the Ogdens- 
burg cannon had been longer, the whole Canadian force might 
have been sunk in mid-river ; but the men were already dashing 
up the American shore whooping like fiends incarnate. First a 
grapeshot caught Jenkins' left arm, and it hung in bloody splin- 
ters. Then a second shot took off his right arm. Still he dashed 
forward, cheering his men, till he dropped in his tracks, faint 
from loss of blood. No answer came back to the summons to 
surrender, and, taking possession of an outer battery, the Cana- 
dians turned its cannon full on the village. Under cover of the 
battery fire, and their own cannon now in position, the whole 
force of Canadians immediately rushed the town at bayonet 
point. Now the bayonet in a solid phalanx of five hundred men 
is not a pleasant weapon to stand up against. As the drill ser- 
geants order, you not only stick the bayonet into your enemy, 
but you turn it round "to let the air in" so he will die; and 
before the furious onslaught of bayonets, the defenders of Og- 
densburg broke, and fled for the woods. Within an hour the 



RAID ON OGDENSBURG 351 

Canadians had burnt the barracks, set fire to two schooners iced 
up, and come off with loot of a dozen cannon, stores of all sorts, 
and with prisoners to the number of seventy-four. 

The ice had left Lake Ontario early this year, and by mid- 
April Commander Chauncey slipped out of Sackett's Har- 
bor with sixteen vessels, having on board seventeen hundred 
troops, besides the crews. It will be remembered that the cap- 
ital of Ontario had been moved from Niagara (Newark) to York 
(Toronto) on the north side of Lake Ontario, then a thriving 







1, )) A 15 ii Olit 



YORK (TORONTO) HARBOR 

village of one thousand souls on the inner shore of Humber Bay. 
On the sand reef known as the Island, in front of the harbor, had 
been constructed a battery with cannon. The main village lay east 
of the present city hall. Westward less than a mile was Gov- 
ernment House, on the site of the present residence. Between 
Government House and the village was not a house of any sort, 
only a wood road flanking the lake, and badly cut up by ravines. 
Just west of Government House, and close to the water, was a 
blockhouse or tower used as powder magazine, mounted with 
cannon to command the landing from the lake. Some accounts 
speak of yet another little outer battery or earthwork farther 



352 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

westward. North of the Government House road, or what is 
now King Street, were dense woods. General Sheaffe, wlio had 
succeeded Brock at Queenston Heights, chanced to be in Toronto 
in April with some six hundred men. Just where the snug quar- 
ters of the Toronto Hunt Club now stand you may look out 
through the green foliage of the woods fringing the high cliffs 
of Lake Ontario, and there lies before your view the pure sky- 
blue surface of an inland sea washing in waves like a fide to the 
watery edge of the far sky line. Early in the morning of April 27 
a forest ranger, dressed in the customary Lincoln green, was 
patrolling the forested edge of Scarborough Heights above the 
lake. The trees had not yet leafed out, but were in that vernal 
state when the branches between earth and sky take on the 
appearance of an aerial network just budding to light and color ; 
and in the ravines still lay patches of the winter snow. The 
morning was hazy, warm, odoriferous of coming summer, with 
not a breath of wind stirring the water. As the sun came up 
over the lake long lines of fire shot through the water haze. 
Suddenly the scout paused on his parade. Something was ad- 
vancing shoreward through the mist, advancing in a circling line 
like the ranks of wild birds flying north, with a lap — lap — lap 
of water drip and a rap — rap — rap of rowlocks from a mul- 
titude of sweeps. The next instant the forest rang to a musket 
shot, for the scout had discovered Commodore Chauncey's fleet 
of sixteen vessels being towed forward by rowers through a dead 
calm. The musket shot was heard by another scout nearer the 
fort. The signal was repeated by another shot, and another for 
the whole twelve miles, till General Sheaffe, sitting smoking a 
cigar in Government House, sprang to his feet and rushed out, 
followed by his officers, to scan the harbor of Humber Bay from 
the tops of the fort bastions. Sure enough ! there was the fleet, 
led by Chauncey's frigate with twenty-four cannon poking from 
its sides, a string of rowboats in tow behind to land the army, 
coming straight across the harbor over water calm as silk. It 
has been told how the fleet made the mistake of passing beyond 
the landing, but the chances are the mistake was intentional 



ATTACK ON TORONTO 353 

for the purpose of avoiding the cannon of the fort bastions. At 
all events the report may be believed that the most of Toronto 
people forgot to go back to breakfast that morning. A moment 
later officers were on top of the bastion towers, directing battery- 
men to take range for their cannon. A battalion variously given 
as from fifty to one hundred, along with some Indians, was at 
once dispatched westward to ambush the Americans landing. 
Another division was posted at the battery beyond Government 
House. Sheaffe saw plainly from the number of men on deck 
that he was outnumbered four to one, and the flag on the com- 
modore's boat probably told him that General Dearborn, the 
commander in chief, was himself on board to direct the land 
forces. Sheaffe has been bitterly blamed for two things, — for not 
invading Niagara after the victory on Queenston Heights, and 
for his conduct at Toronto. He now withdrew the main forces 
to a ravine east of the fort, plainly preparatory for retreat. Not 
thus would Brock have acted. 

Meanwhile time has worn on to nine o'clock. The American 
ships have anchored. The Canadian cannon are sending the 
bombs skipping across the water. The rowboats are transferring 
the army from the schooners, and the ambushed sharpshooters 
are picking the bluecoats off as they step from ships to boats. 

" By the powers ! " yells Forsyth, an American officer, " I 
can't stand seeing this any longer. Come on, boys ! jump into 
our boats ! " and he bids the bugles blow till the echoes are 
dancing over Humber waters. Dearborn and Chauncey stay on 
board. Pike leads the landing, and Chauncey 's cannon set such 
grape and canister flying through the woods as clear out those 
ambushed shooters, the Indians flying like scared partridges, 
and the advance is made along Government House road at quick 
march. Just west of the Government House battery the march- 
ers halt to send forward demand for surrender. Firing on both 
sides ceases. The smoke clears from the churned-up waters of 
the bay, and Commander Pike has seated himself on an old can- 
non, when, before answer can come back to the demand, a fright- 
ful accident occurs that upsets all plans. Waiting for the signal 



354 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



to begin firing again, a batteryman in the near bastion was hold- 
ing the Hghted fuse in his right hand, ready for the cannon, when 
something distracted his attention, and he wheeled with the 
lighted match behind him. It touched a box of explosives. If 
any proof were needed that the tragedy was not designed, it is 
to be found in the fact that English officers were still on the 
roof of the blockhouse, and the apartment below crowded with 
Canadians. A roar shook the earth. A cloud of black flame 
shot into mid-air, and the next minute the ground for half a mile 
about was strewn with the remains, mangled to a pulp, of more 
than three hundred men, ninety of whom were Canadians, two 
hundred and sixty Americans, including Brigadier Pike fatally 
wounded by a rock striking his head. In the horror of the next 
few moments, defense was forgotten. Wheelbarrows, trucks, 
gun wagons, were hurried forward to carry wounded and dead to 
the hospital. Leaving his officers to arrange the terms of sur- 
render, at 2 P.M. Sheaffe retreated at quick march for Kings- 
ton, pausing only to set fire to a half-built ship and some naval 
stores. Lying on a stretcher on Chauncey's ship, Pike is roused 
from unconsciousness by loud huzzas. 
" What is it .? " he asks. 

" They are running up the stars and stripes, sir." 
A smile passed over Pike's face. When the surgeon looked 
again, the commander was dead. For twenty-four hours the 
haggle went on as to terms of capitulation. Within that time, 
two or three things occurred to inflame the invading troops. 
They learned that Sheaffe had slipped away ; as the American 
general's report put it, "They got the shell, but the kernel of 
the nut got away." They learned that stores had been destroyed 
after the surrender had been granted. Without more restraint, 
and in defiance of orders, the American troops gave themselves 
up to plunder all that night. In their rummaging through the 
Parliament buildings they found hanging above the Speaker's chair 
what Canadian records declare was a wig, what American re- 
ports say was a huniau scalp sent in by some ranger from the 
west. P"rom what I have read in the private papers of fur traders 



TORONTO BURNED 355 

in that period regarding international scalping, I am inclined 
to think that wig may have been an American scalp. Certainly, 
the fur traders of Michilimackinac wrapped no excuses round 
their savagery when the canoes all over the coasts of Lake Supe- 
rior, in lieu of flags, had American scalps flaunting from their 
prows. At all events, word went out that an American scalp 
had been found above the Speaker's chair. It was night. The 
troops were drunk with success and perhaps with the plunder 
of the wine shops. All that night and all the next day and 
night the skies were alight with the flames of Toronto's public 
buildings on fire. Also, the army chest with ten thousand dol- 
lars in gold, which Sheaffe had forgotten, was dug up on pain 
of the whole town being fired unless the money were delivered. 
Private houses were untouched. Looted provisions which the 
fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders distributed among the 
poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners on parole not 
to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for Niagara. 

It is a month later. Down at Fort George on the Canadian 
side General Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto 
and is on the lookout for the enemy's fleet. On the American 
side of the Niagara River, from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, are 
seven thousand troops eager to wipe out the stain of last year's 
defeat. On the Canadian side, from Fort George to Chippewa 
and Erie, are twenty-three hundred men, mostly volunteers from 
surrounding farms, and powder is scarce and provisions are 
scarce, for Chauncey's fleet has cut off help from St. Lawrence 
and Kingston way. All the last two weeks of May, heavy hot 
fog lay on the lake and on the river between the hostile lines, 
but there was no mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about. 
Red-hot shot showers on Fort George in a perfect rain. Stand- 
ing on the other side of the river are thousands of spectators, 
among them one grand old swashbuckler fellow in a cocked hat, 
whose fighting days are past, taking snuff after the fashion of a 
former generation and wearing an air of grand patronage to the 
American troops because he has seen service in Europe. 



356 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

" No, sir," says the grand old fighting cock pompously to his 
auditors, " can't be done ! Have seen it tried on the Continent, 
and you can't do it ! Lay a wager you can't do it ! Can't pos- 
sibly set fire to a fort by red-hot shot ! " 

Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame lights up the 
foggy darkness, the old gentleman is put to his trumps. " See ! " 
they say ; " Fort George is on fire "; and over at Fort George 
the bucket brigade works hard as the cannoneers. But the fog is 
too good a chance to be missed by Chauncey ; rowing out with 
muffled oars all the nights of May 24 and 25, he has his men 
sounding . . . sounding . . . sounding in silence the channel, 
right within pistol shot of Fort George. The night of the 26th 
troops and marines are bidden breakfast at two in the morning, 
and be ready for action with a single blanket and rations for one 
day. That is all they are told. They embark at four. The waters 
are dead calm, the morning of the 27th gray as wool with fog. 
Sweeps out Chauncey's fleet, circles up to Fort George with one 
hundred scows in tow, carrying fifty soldiers each. Vincent takes 
his courage in his teeth and gathers his one thousand men inside 
the walls. Then the cannon of the frigates split fog and air and 
earth, and, under cover of the fire, the scows gain the land by 
9 A.M. First, Vincent's sharpshooters sally from the fort and 
fire ; then they fire from the walls ; then they overturn guns, re- 
treat from the walls, throw what powder they cannot carry into 
the water, and retreat, fighting, behind stone walls and ditches. 
The contest of one thousand against six thousand is hopeless. 
Vincent sends coureurs riding like the wind to Chippewa and 
Queenston and Erie, ordering the Canadians to retire to the 
Back Country. By four o'clock in the afternoon Americans are 
in possession of the Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vin- 
cent retreats at quick march along the lake shore towards what 
is now Hamilton. June i General Dearborn sends his offlcers. 
Chandler and Winder, in hot pursuit with thirty-five hundred men. 

Vincent's soldiers have less than ninety rounds of powder to 
a man. He has only one thousand men, for the garrisons of 



VINCENT'S SOLDIERS AT BURLINGTON BAY 



157 



Chippewa and Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in 
a circle to the region of St. David's June 5, Vincent's Cana- 
dians are in camp at Burlington Bay. Only seven miles away, 
at Stony Creek, lies the American army, out sentries posted at 
a church, artillery on a height commanding a field, officers and 
men asleep in the long grass. Humanly speaking, nothing could 
prevent a decisive battle the next day. The two American 
officers. Chandler and Winder, sit late into the night, candles 
alight over camp stools, mapping out what they think should be 
the campaign. It is a hot night, — muggy, with June showers, 
lighted up by an occasional 
flash of sheet lightning. 
Then all candles out, and 
pitch darkness, and silence 
as of a desert ! The Ameri- 
can army is asleep, — in the 
dead sleep of men exhausted 
from long, hard, swift march- 
ing. The artillerymen on the 
hillocks, the sentries, the 
outposts at the church, — 
they, too, are sound asleep ! 
But the Canadians, too, 
know that, humanly speak- 
ing, nothing can prevent a 
decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run — I do not 
vouch for their truth, though facts seem to point to some such 
explanation — that Harvey, a Canadian officer, had come back 
to the American army that night disguised as a Quaker peddling 
potatoes, and noted the unguarded condition of the exhausted 
troops ; also that Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through 
the American lines dressed as a rustic selling butter. Whether 
these stories are true or not, or whether, indeed, the Canadians 
knew anything about the American camp, they plucked resolu- 
tion from desperation. If they waited for the morrow's battle, 
they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that seven 




FrrZGIBBONS 



358 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the 
American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. 
Setting out at 1 1.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, 
the Canadians marched in perfect silence. Harvey had given 
orders that not a shot should be fired, not a word spoken, the 
bayonet alone to be used. By two in the morning of June 6 the 
marchers came to the church where the sentries were posted. 
Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The third 
was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. 
The Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the 
American army if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of 
some young officers, who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild 
huzza. On the instant, bugles sounded alarm ; drums beat a 
crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his place in the grass, 
hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of the night was 
ablaze with musketry ; the soldiers were firing blindly ; officers 
were shouting orders that nobody heard ; troops were dashing 
here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery 
horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over the field. 
Major Plenderleath with a company of young Canadians suddenly 
found himself in the midst of the American camp. One of the 
young raiders stabbed seven Americans to death ; a brother 
bayoneted four, and before daylight betrayed the smallness of 
their forces the raiders came safely off with three guns and one 
hundred prisoners, including the two American officers. Winder 
and Chandler. The loss to the British was one hundred and fifteen 
killed and wounded ; but there would be no battle the next clay. 
The battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back 
down the lake front to Fort George, harried by the English fleet 
under Sir James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes 
might be related of the Stony Creek raid. For years it was to 
be the theme of camp-fire yarns. For instance, in the flare of 
musketry fire a Canadian found himself gazing straight along 
the blade of an American's bayonet. " Sir, the password," de- 
manded the American sentry. Luckily the scout, instead of 
wearing an English red coat, had on a blue jacket resembling 



ILL HAP OF ALL THE GENERALS 359 

that of the American marines, and he instantly took his cue. 
"Rascal," he thundered back, " what do you mean, off your line? 
Go back to your post!" The sentry's bayonet dropped ; there 
was momentary darkness, and the Canadian literally bolted. 
Then ludicrous ill luck befell all the generals. Vincent had ac- 
companied the raiders on horseback. When the bugles sounded 
"retire," he gave his horse the bit, and in the pitch darkness 
the brute carried him pellmell along the wrong road, over fences 
and hayfields, some fifteen miles into the Back Country. Next 
day, when Vincent was missing, under flag of truce messengers 
went to the retreating American army to find if he were among 
the dead. At four in the afternoon his horse came limping into 
the Canadian camp. Chandler, the American officer, on awaken- 
ing had sprung on horseback and spurred over the field shouting 
commands. In the darkness his horse fell and threw him. When 
Chandler came to himself he was prisoner among the Canadians. 
Winder's ill luck was equally bad. By the flare of the firing he 
saw what he thought was a group of artillerymen deserting a 
gun. Dashing up, he laid about him with his pistol, shouting, 
" Come on ! come on ! " Another flare of fire, and he found 
himself surrounded by a circle of Canadian bayonets. " Drop 
your pistol, sir, or you are a dead man," ordered a young Cana- 
dian, and Winder surrendered. 

It will be recalled that the garrisons of Queenston below the 
Falls, and Chippewa above, and Erie at the head of the river, 
had retreated from the invading Americans to the Back Country 
now traversed by Welland Canal. From different posts beyond 
what was known as the Black Swamp, these bands of the dis- 
persed Canadian army swooped down on the American outposts, 
harrying the whole American line from Lake Ontario to Lake 
Erie. Of all the raiders none was more daring than Lieutenant 
Fitzgibbons, posted beyond the Beaver Dams, at a stone house 
near De Ceu's Falls. Space forbids more than one episode of 
his raids. Once, while riding along Lundy's Lane alone, he was 
recognized by the wife of a Canadian captain, who dashed from 



36o CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the cottage, warning him to retreat, as a hundred and fifty 
Americans had just passed that way. Standing in front of the 
roadside inn was the cavalry horse of an American. F'itzgibbons 
could n't resist the temptation for a bout with the foe, and dis- 
mounting, was entering the door when a soldier in blue dashed 
at him with leveled musket. Naturally not keen to create alarm, 
Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon from the man's hand, and with- 
out a sound had thrown him on the ground, when another Amer- 
ican rifleman dashed from behind. Strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons 
threw the first man violently against the second, and was hold- 
ing both at bay beneath his leveled rifle when one of the downed 
men snatched the Irishman's sword from the scabbard. He was 
in the very act of thrusting the sword point into Fitzgibbons, 
when the innkeeper's wife, with a dexterous kick, sent the 
weapon whirling out of his hand. Fitzgibbons disarmed the men, 
tied them, threw them across his horse, and himself mounting, 
galloped to the woods with a laugh, though one hundred and fifty 
Americans were within a quarter of a mile. 

The American commanders at Niagara determined to clean 
out this nest of raiders from the Back Country, and Lieutenant 
Boerstler was ordered to march from Fort George with some 
six hundred men. Leaving Fort George secretly at night, 
Boerstler came to Queenston at eleven on the night of June 23. 
Here all Canadian soldiers free on parole were seized, to pre- 
vent word of the attack reaching the Back Country. The troops 
were not even permitted to light camp fire or candles. The 
great secrecy of the American marchers at once roused suspicion 
among the Canadians between Queenston and the village of 
St. David's that the expedition was directed against Fitzgibbons' 
scouts. At his home, between Queenston and St. David's, dwelt 
a United Empire Loyalist, James Secord, recovering from dan- 
gerous wounds received in the battle of Queenston Heights. He 
was too weak himself to go by night and forewarn Fitzgibbons, 
but his wife, Laura Ingersoll, a woman of some thirty years, 
was also of the old United Empire Loyalist stock. She imme- 
diately set out alone for the Back Country to warn Fitzgibbons. 



LAURA SECORD'S HEROISM 



361 



Many and contradictory stories are told of her march. Whether 
she tramped two nights and two days, or only one night and one 
day, whether her march led her twenty or only twelve miles, 
matters little. She succeeded in passing the first sentry on the 
excuse she was going out to milk a cow, and she eluded a sec- 
ond by telling him she wished to visit a wounded brother, which 
was true. Then she struck away from the beaten path through 
what was known as the 
Black Swamp. It had 
rained heavily. The ce- 
dar woods were soggy 
with moisture, the swamp 
swollen, and the streams 
running a mill race. 
Through the summer heat, 
through the windfall, over 
the quaking forest bog, 
tramped Laura Secord. 
It may be supposed that 
the most of wild animals 
had been frightened from 
the woods by the heavy 
cannonading for almost 
a year ; but the hoot of 
screech owl, the eldritch 
scream of wild cat, the 
far howl of the wolf pack hanging on the trail of the armies for 
carrion, were not sounds cjuieting to the nerves of a frightened 
woman flitting through the forest by moonlight. It was clear 
moonlight when she came within range of Beaver Dam and De 
Ceu's house. She had just emerged in an open field when she 
was assailed with unearthly yells, and a thousand ambushed 
Indians rose from the grass. 

"Woman! A woman! What does a w^hite woman here.''" 
demanded the chief, seizing her arm. She answered that she 
was a friend and it was matter of life and death for her to see 




LAURA SECORD 



362 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura Sccord delivered her warning and 
saved the Canadian army. The episode has gone down to history 
one of the national legends, like the story of Madeline Vercheres 
on the St. Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his forty men in place, 
and Ducharme, commander of the Indians, scatters his one thou- 
sand redskins in ambush along the trail. Also, word is sent for 
two other detachments to come with all speed. 

June 24, at seven in the morning, Boerstler is moving along a 
narrow forest trail through the beech woods of Beaver Dams. 
The men are advancing single file, mounted infantrymen first 
with muskets slouched across saddle pommels, then the heavy 
wagons, then cavalry to rear. The timber is heavy, the trail 
winding. Here the long line deploys out from the trail to avoid 
jumping windfall ; there halt is made to cut a way for the 
wagons ; then the long line moves sleepily forward, yellow sun- 
light shafted through the green foliage across the riders' blue 
uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out, and another, and another ! 
The forest is full of unseen foes, before, behind, on all sides, the 
cavalry forces breaking rank and dashing forward among the 
wagons. Boerstler sees it will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on. 
Sending messengers back to Fort George for aid, he pushes for- 
ward into an open wheat field. Fifty-six men have fallen, and 
the bullets are still raining from an invisible foe. Looking back 
he sees mounted men in green coats passing and repassing across 
his trail, filing and refiling. It is a trick of Fitzgibbons to give 
an impression he has ten times forty men, but the Americans 
do not know. There is no retreat, and Indians are to the fore. 
In the midst of confusion Fitzgibbons comes forward with a 
white handkerchief on his sword point and begs Boerstler to 
prevent bloodshed by instant surrender. Boerstler demands to 
see the number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says he will repeat 
the request to his commanding officer. Luck is with Fitzgibbons, 
for just as he goes back a small party of reenforcements arrives, 
and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer, 
telling Boerstler's messenger haughtily that the demand to see 
the enemy is an insult, and answer must be given in five minutes 



CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST 363 

or the Canadians will not be responsible for the Indians. The 
fight has lasted three hours. Boerstler surrenders with his entire 
force. Such was the battle of Beaver Dams. 

Ever since Brock had captured Detroit in 18 12, General 
Procter, with twenty-five hundred Canadians, had been holding 
the western part of Ontario ; and the defeat of the English at 
Fort George had placed him in a desperate position. His men had 
been without pay for months ; their clothes were in tatters, and 
now, with the Americans in possession of Niagara region, there 
was danger of Procter's food supply being cut off. Procter him- 
self had not been idle these six months. In fact, he had been too 
active for the good of his supplies. Space forbids a detailed ac- 
count of the raids directed by him and carried out with the aid 
of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief. January of 18 13 saw a 
detachment of Procter's men up Raisin River, west of Detroit, 
where they defeated General Winchester and captured nearly 
five hundred prisoners, to be set free on parole, Harrison, the 
American general, is on his way to Lake Erie to rescue Detroit. 
Procter hastens in May to meet him with one thousand Canadians 
and fifteen hundred Indians. The clash takes place at a barri- 
cade known as Fort Meigs on Maumee River, south of Lake 
Erie, when again, by the aid of Tecumseh, Procter captures 
four hundred and fifty prisoners. It was on this occasion that 
the Indians broke from control and tomahawked forty defense- 
less American prisoners. August sees Procter raiding Sandusky; 
but the Americans refuse to come out and battle, and the axes 
of the Canadians are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, 
and when at night Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost 
nearly one hundred men. At last, in September, the fleets being 
built for the Canadians at Amherstburg and for the Americans 
at Presqu' Isle are completed. Whichever side commands Lake 
Erie will control supplies ; and though Captain Barclay, the 
Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford to delay the 
contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to sail out 
and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle. 



;64 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been 
captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and 
a few soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men 
on six vessels. September lO, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay 
finds Perry's fleet of seven vessels with six hundred and fifty 
men. For two hours the furious cannonading could be heard 

all the way up 
to Amherst- 
burg. Space 
forbids details 
of the fight so 
celebrated in 
the annals of 
the American 
navy. After 
broadsides that 
tore hulls clean 
of masts and 
decks, setting 
sails in flame 
and the waters 
seething in 
mountainous 
waves, the two 
fleets got with- 
in pistol shot 
of each other, 
and Perry's 
superior num- 
bers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and one 
third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally 
exterminated before three in the afternoon. 

Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off 
from supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecum- 
seh, the chief, was for fighting to the bitter death, it was de- 
cided to retreat up the Thames to Vincent's army near modern 




TWO VIEWS OF THE BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE 
(From prints published in 1815) 



M()KA\ lANTOWN DlSASIKR 365 

Hamilton. All the world knows the bitter end of that retreat. 
Procter seems to have been so sure that General Harrison would 
not follow, that the Canadian forces did not even pause to destroy 
bridges behind them ; and behind came Harrison, hot foot, with 
four thousand fighters from the Kentucky backwoods. October 
first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham, provisions 
and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons. 
Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless 
messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had 
captured the provision boats. Sending on his family and the 
women with a convoy of two hundred and fifty soldiers, Procter 
faced about on the morning of October the 5th, to give battle. 
On the left was the river Thames, on the right a cedar swamp, 
to rear on the east the Indian mission of Moraviantown. The 
troops formed in line across a forest road. Procter seems to 
have lost both his heart and his head, for he permitted his fatigued 
troops to go into the fight without breakfast. Not a barricade, 
not a hurdle, not a log was placed to break the advance of Har- 
rison's cavalry. The American riders came on like a whirlwind. 
Crack went the line of Procter's men in a musketry volley ! 
The horses plunged, checked up, reared, and were spurred for- 
ward. Another volley from the Canadians ! But it was too late. 
Harrison's fifteen hundred riders had galloped clean through 
the Canadian lines, slashing swords as they dashed past. Now 
they wheeled and came on the Canadians' rear. Indians and 
Canadians scattered to the woods before such fury, like harried 
rabbits, poor Tecumseh in the very act of tomahawking an 
American colonel when a pistol shot brought him down. The 
brave Indian chief was scalped by the white backwoodsmen and 
skinned and the body thrown into the woods a prey to wolves. 
Flushed with victory and without Harrison's permission, the 
Kentucky men dashed in and set fire to Moraviantown, the In- 
dian mission. As for Procter, he had mounted the fleetest horse 
to be found, and was riding in mad flight for Burlington Heights. 
It is almost a pity he had not fallen in some of his former heroic 
raids, for he now became a sorry figure in history, reprimanded 



;66 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



and suspended from the ranks of the army. The only explana- 
tion of Procter's conduct at Moraviantown is that he was anxious 
for the safety of his wife and daughters, perhaps needlessly fear- 
ing that the rough backwoodsmen would retaliate on them for the 
treachery of the Indians tomahawking American prisoners of war. 
And it had fared almost as badly with the Canadian fleet 
on Lake Ontario. The boats under Sir James Yeo, the young 

English commander, were 
good only for close-range 
fighting, the boats under 
Commodore Chauncey 
best for long-range firing. 
All July and August the 
fleets maneuvered to 
catch each other off guard. 
Between times each raided 
the coast of the other for 
provisions, Chauncey pay- 
ing a second visit to To- 
ronto, Yeo swooping down 
on Sodus Bay. All Sep- 
tember the game of hide 
and seek went on between 
the two Ontario squad- 
rons. Sunday night, the 
8th of September, in a 
gale, two of Chauncey's 
ships sank, with all hands but sixteen. Two nights later in a 
squally wind, by the light of the moon, two more of his slow sail- 
ers, unable to keep up with the rest of the fleet, were snapped up 
by the English off Niagara with one hundred captives. Again, 
on September 27, at eight in the evening, six miles off Toronto 
harbor, Chauncey came up with the English, and the two fleets 
poured broadsides into each other. Then Yeo's crippled brigs 
limped into Toronto harbor, while Chauncey sailed gayly off to 
block all connection with Montreal and help to convoy troops 




TECUMSEH 



CHRYSLER'S FARM 367 

from Niagara down the St. Lawrence for the master stroke of 
the year. The way was now clear for the twofold aim of the 
American staff, — to starve out Ontario and concentrate all 
strength in a signal attack on Montreal. 

The autumn campaign was without doubt marked by the most 
comical and heroic episodes of the war. Wilkinson was to go down 
the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario with eight thousand men 
to join General Hampton coming by the way of Lake Champlain 
with another five thousand men in united attack against Montreal. 
November 5 Wilkinson's troops descended in three hundred flat- 
boats through the Thousand Islands, now bleak and leafless and 
somber in the gray autumn light. It seemed hardly possible that 
the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston would dare to 
pursue such a strong American force, but history is made up of 
impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops scat- 
tered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, 
half the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, 
and were in the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with 
Hampton, where Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, 
just above Montreal. The other half of W^ilkinson's army was 
above the Long Sault, near Chrysler's Farm. From the outset 
the rear guard of the advancing invaders had been harried by 
Canadian sharpshooters. November 11, about midday, it was 
learned that a Canadian battalion of eight hundred was pressing 
eagerly on the rear. Chance shots became a rattling fusillade. 
Quick as flash the Americans land and wheel face about to fight, 
posted behind a stone wall and along a dried gully with shelter- 
ing cliffs at Chrysler's Farm. By 2.30 the foes are shooting at 
almost hand-to-hand range. Then, through the powder smoke, the 
Canadians break from a march to a run, and charge with all 
the dauntless fury of men fighting for hearth and home. Before 
the line of flashing bayonets the invaders break and run. Two 
hundred have fallen on each side in an action of less than two 
hours. Then the boats go on down to the other half of the 
army at Cornwall, and here is worse news, — news that sends 



368 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Wilkinson's army back to the American side of the St. Lawrence 
without attempting attack on Montreal. General Hampton on his 
way from Lake Champlain has been totally discomfited. 

Finding the way to the St. Lawrence barred by the old raiders' 
trail of Richelieu River, Hampton had struck across westward 
from Lake Champlain to join Wilkinson on the St. Lawrence, 
west of Montreal, somewhere near the road of Chateauguay 

River. With five thou- 
sand infantry and one 
hundred and eighty cav- 
alry he has advanced to 
a ford beyond the fork of 
Chateauguay. Uncertain 
where the blow would be 
struck, Canada's governor 
had necessarily scattered 
his meager forces. 

To oppose advance by 
the Chateauguay he has 
sent a young Canadian 
officer, De Salaberry, with 
one hundred and fifty 
French Canadian sharp- 
shooters and one hundred 
Lidians. De Salaberry 
does not court defeat by 
neglecting precautions be- 
cause he is weak. Windfall is hurriedly thrown up as barricade 
along the trail. Where the path narrows between the river and 
the bleak forest, De Salaberry has tree trunks laid spike end 
towards the foe. At the last moment comes McDonnell of 
Brockville with six hundred men, but De Salaberry's three 
hundred occupy the front line facing the ford. McDonnell is 
farther along the river. By the night of October 25 the Amer- 
ican army is close on the dauntless little band hidden in the 
forest. On the morning of the 26th three thousand Americans 




DE SALABERRY 



DE SALABERRY'S BUGLERS ^ 369 

cross the south bank of the river, with the design of crossing 
north again farther down and swinging round on De Salaberry's 
rear. At the first shot of the bluecoats poor De Salaberry's 
forlorn little band broke in panic fright and fled, but De Sala- 
berry on the river bank had grabbed his bugle boy by the scruff 
of the neck with a grip of iron, and in terms more forcible than 
polite bade him " sound — sound — sound tJic advance^' till the 
forest was filled with flying echoes of bugle calls. McDonnell 
behind hears the challenge, and mistaking the cheering call for 
note of victory, bids his buglers blow, blow advance, blow and 
cheer like devils ! The Americans pour shot into the forest. 
The bugle calls multiply till the woods seem filled with an ad- 
vancing army and the yells split the sky. Also McDonnell has 
ordered his men to fire kneeling, so that few of the American 
shots take effect. The advancing host became demoralized. At 
2.30 they sounded retreat, and it may truly be said that the 
battle of Chateauguay was won by De Salaberry's bugle boy, 
held to the sticking point, not because he was brave, but because 
he could not run away. It is said that Hampton simply would 
not believe the truth when told of the numbers by whom he had 
been defeated. It is also said that immediately after the victory 
De Salaberry fell ill from a bad attack of nerves, brought on by 
lack of sleep. However that may be, the Canadian governor, 
Prevost, did not suffer from an attack of conscience, for in his 
report to the English government he ascribed the victory to his 
own management and presence on the field. 

The year of 18 13 closes darkly for both sides. Before with- 
drawing from Niagara region the invaders ravage the country 
and set fire to the village of Newark, driving four hundred 
women and children roofless to December snows. Sir Gordon 
Drummond, who has just come to command in Ontario, retaliates 
swiftly and without mercy. He crosses the Niagara by night ; 
the fort is carried at bayonet point, three hundred men cap- 
tured and three thousand arms taken. Next, Lewiston is burned, 
then Black Rock, and on the last day of the year, Buffalo. Down 



370 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

on the Atlantic Coast both fleets win victories, but the Enghsh 
work the greater hurt, for they blockade the entire coast south 
of New York. On the English squadron are European mer- 
cenaries who have been given the name of Canadian battalions, 
because their work is to harry the American coast in order to 
draw off the American army from Canada. European merce- 
naries have been the same the world over, — riffraff blackguards, 
guilty of infamous outrages the moment they are out from under 
the officers' eye. These were the troops misnamed " Canadians," 
whose infamous conduct left a heritage of hate long after the 
war ; but this is a story of the navy rather than of Canada. 

The contest has now lasted for almost two years, and both 
sides are as far from decisive victory as when war was declared in 
June of 1812. Long since the embargo laws of France and Eng- 
land against neutral nations have been rescinded, and the Amer- 
ican coast has suffered more from the blockade of this war than it 
ever did from the wars between France and England. The year 
1 8 14 opens with Napoleon defeated and England pouring aid 
across the Atlantic into Canada. Wilkinson's big army hovers 
inactive round Lake Champlain, and Prevost is afraid to weaken 
Montreal by forwarding aid to Drummond at Niagara. The 
British fleet blockades Sackett's Harbor, and the American fleet 
blockades Kingston. The Canadians raid Oswego on Lake On- 
tario for provisions. The Americans raid Port Dover on Lake 
Erie, leaving the country a blackened waste and Tom Talbot's 
Castle Malahide of logs a smoking ruin, with the determined 
aim of cutting off all supplies in Ontario. Drummond sends his 
troops scouring the country inland from Niagara for provisions. 
Military law is established for the seizure of cattle and grain, 
but for the latter as high a price is paid as $2.50 a bushel, and 
many a pioneer farmer back from York (Toronto) and BurUng- 
ton (Hamilton) dates the foundation of his fortune from the 
famine prices paid for bread during the War of 18 12. 

Of course the United States did not purpose leaving the fron- 
tier of Niagara because Drummond had burnt the forts. By 



THE CHARGE AT CHIPPEWA 



171 



May, Major General Brown had taken command of the United 
States troops at Buffalo. The next two months pass, drilling 
and training, and bringing forward provisions. July 3, at day 
dawn, during fog thick as wool on the lake, five thousand Ameri- 
can troops cross to the Canadian side. Fort Erie's English garri- 
son capitulates on the spot, and the English retreat down Niagara 
River towards Chippewa by the Falls. At Chippewa, at Queens- 
ton, at Fort George, in all to 
guard the Canadian frontier 
are only some twenty-eight 
hundred men. Three fourths 
of these are kept doing gar- 
rison duty, leaving only seven 
hundred men free afield. Just 
beside Chippewa, a creek some 
twenty feet wide comes into 
Niagara River. The Canadians 
have destroyed the bridge as 
they retreat, but the Ameri- 
cans pursue, and at midnight 
of the 4th the two armies are 
facing each other across the 
brook, ominous dreadful si- 
lence through the darkness but 
for the sentry's arms or the 
lumbering advance of artillery 

wagons dragged cautiously near the Canadians. The bridge is 
repaired under peppering shot from the British. By four on the 
afternoon of the 5th, the Americans have crossed the stream. 
Their artillery is in place, and another battalion has forded higher 
up and swept round to take the Canadians on the flank. The Ca- 
nadians must either flee in such blind panic as Procter displayed 
at Moraviantown, or turn and fight. Indians in ambush, reen- 
forcements from Fort George and Queenston formed in three 
solid columns, the English wheel to face the foe. First there is 
the rattling clatter of musketry fire from shooters behind in the 




.SIR GORDON DRUJMMOND 



372 CAiNADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

grass. Then the solid cokimns break from a march to a run, 
and charge with their bayonets. The artillery fire of the Amer- 
icans meets the runners in a terrible death blast ; but as the 
front lines drop, the men behind step in their places till the 
armies are not one hundred yards apart. Then another blast 
from the heavy guns of the Americans literally tears the Cana- 
dian columns to tatters. As the smoke lifts there are no col- 
umns left, only scattered groups of men retreating across a field 
strewn thick with the mangled dead. Out of twelve hundred 
men, the Canadians have lost five hundred. The charge of the 
forlorn twelve hundred at Chippewa against the artillery of four 
thousand Americans has been likened to the charge of the Light 
Brigade in the Russian War. Though the Canadians were de- 
feated, their heroic defense had for a few days at least checked 
the advance of the invaders. And now the position of the be- 
leaguered became desperate. At Fort George, at Queenston, 
and at Burlington Heights, the men were put on half rations. 

Why did the Americans not advance at once against Queens- 
ton and Fort George .? For three weeks they awaited Chaun- 
cey's fleet to attack from the water side, so the army could 
rush the fort from the land side ; but Chauncey was ill and 
could not come, and the interval gave the hard-pressed Cana- 
dians their chance. Drummond comes from Kingston with four 
hundred fresh men ; also he calls on the people to leave their 
farms and rally as volunteers to the last desperate fight. This 
increased his troops by another thousand, though many of the 
volunteers were mere boys, who scarcely knew how to hold 
a gun. Then, from a dozen signs, Drummond's practiced eye 
foresaw that a forward movement was being planned by the 
enemy without Chauncey's cooperation. All the American bag- 
gage was being ordered to rear. False attacks to draw off 
observation are made on Fort George outposts. American 
scouts are seen reconnoitering the Back Country. Drummond 
rightly guessed that the attack was being planned in one of two 
directions, — by rounding through the Back Country, either to 
fall in great numbers on Fort George, or to cut between the 



FINAL ACTION AT LUNDY'S LANE 373 

Canadian army of Hamilton region and of Niagara region, tak- 
ing both battalions in the rear. From Fort George to Queenston 
Canadian troops are posted by Drummond, and where the road 
called Lundy's Lane runs from the Falls at right angles to the 
Back Country more battalions are ordered on guard against the 
advance of the invaders. Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, climb- 
ing to a tree on top of a high hill, sees the Americans, five 
thousand of them, gray coats, blue coats, white trousers, mov- 
ing up from Chippewa towards Lundy's Lane. Quickly sixteen 
hundred Canadian troops under General Riall take possession 
of a hill fronting Lundy's Lane and the Falls. On the hill is a 
little brown church and an old-fashioned graveyard. In the 
midst of the graves the Canadian cannon are posted. Round 
the cemetery runs a stone wall screened by shrubbery, and on 
both sides of Lundy's Lane are endless orchards of cherry and 
peach and apples, the fruit just beginning to redden in the 
summer sun. Whether the enemy aim at Fort George or Ham- 
ilton, the Canadian position on Lundy's Lane must be passed 
and captured. As soon as Drummond had Fitzgibbons' report, 
he sent messengers galloping for Hercules Scott, who had been 
ordered to retreat to the lake, to come back to Lundy's Lane 
with his twelve hundred men. It may be imagined that the 
Americans guessed what message the horseman in the slather 
of foam was bearing back to Hercules Scott ; for they at once 
attacked the Canadians in Lundy's Lane with fury, to capture 
the guns on the hill before Hercules Scott's reenforcements 
could come. 

It was now six o'clock in the evening of July 25, a sweltering 
hot night, and the troops on both sides were parched for water, 
though the roar of whole inland oceans of water could be heard 
pouring over the Falls of Niagara. As the Canadians had charged 
against the American guns at Chippewa, so now the Americans 
charged uphill against the guns of the Canadians, hurling their 
full strength against the enemy's center. Creeping under shel- 
ter of the cemetery stone walls, the bluecoats would fire a vol- 
ley of musketry, jump over the fence, dash through the smoke, 



374 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

bayonet in hand, to capture the Canadian guns. Time, time 
again, the rush was dauntlessly made, and time, time again 
met by the withering blast. Before nine o'clock the attacking 
lines had lost more than five hundred men, and as many Cana- 
dians had fallen on the hill. The dead and mangled lay liter- 
ally in heaps. As darkness deepened, lit only by the wan light 
of a fitful moon and the awesome flare of volley after volley, 
the fearful screams of the dying could be heard above the roar 
of the Falls and the whistle of cannon ball. Riall, the com- 
mander of the Canadians, had been wounded and captured. Of 
his sixteen hundred Canadians, Drummond had now left only 
one thousand, and he was himself bleeding from a deep wound 
in the neck. Half the American officers had been carried from 
the field injured, and still the command was repeated to rush the 
hill before Scott's reenforcements came, and each time the ad- 
vancing line was driven back shattered and thinned, Canadians 
dashing in pursuit, cheering and whooping, till both armies were 
so inextricably mixed it was impossible to hear or heed commands. 
It was in one of these melees that Riall, the Canadian, found 
himself among the American lines and was captured to the wild 
and jubilant shouting of the boys in blue and gray. Pause fell 
at nine o'clock. The Americans were mustering for the final 
terrible rush. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the 
darkness was inky. Then a shout from the Canadian side split 
the very welkin. Hercules Scott had arrived with his twelve 
hundred men on a run, breathless and tired from a march and 
countermarch of twenty miles. The Americans took up the 
yell ; for fresh reserves had joined them, too, and Lundy's Lane 
became a bedlam of ear-shattering sounds, — heavy artillery 
wagons forcing up the hill at a gallop over dead and dying, bombs 
from the Canadian guns exploding in the darkness, horses taking 
fright and bolting from their riders, carrying American guns clear 
across the lines among the Canadians. A wild yell of triumph told 
that the Americans had captured the hill. For the next two 
hours it was a hand-to-hand fight in pitchy darkness. Drum- 
mond, the Englishman, could be heard right in the midst of the 



GREAT HEROISM ON BOTH SIDES 



;75 



American lines, shouting', " Stick to them, men ! sticlv to them ! 
Don't give up ! Don't turn ! Stick to them ! You '11 have it ! " 
And American officers were found amidst Canadian battalions, 
shouting stentorian command: "Level low! Fire at their 
flashes! Watch the flash, and fire at their flashes!" 

The Americans have captured the Canadian guns, but in the 
darkness they cannot carry them off. Each side thinks the other 
beaten, and neither will 
retreat. In the confu- 
sion it is impossible to 
rally the battalions, and 
men are attacking their 
own side by mistake. 
Both sides claim victory, 
and each is afraid to 
await what daylight may 
reveal ; for it is no exag- 
geration to say that at 
the battle of Lundy's 
Lane the blood of one 
third of each side dyed 
the field. The Cana- 
dians as defenders of 
their own homes, fight- 
ing in the last ditch, dare 
not retire. The Ameri- 
cans, having more to 
risk in numbers, with- 
draw their troops at two in the morning. Of her twenty- 
eight hundred men Canada had lost nine hundred ; and the 
American loss is as great. Too exhausted to retire, Drum- 
mond's men flung themselves on the ground and slept lying 
among the dead, heedless alike of the drenching rain that fol- 
lows artillery fire, of the roaring cataract, of the groans from 
the wounded. Men awakened in the gray dawn to find them- 
selves unrecognizable from blood and powder smoke, to find. 




MONUMENT AT LUNDV S LANE 



376 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

in some cases, that the comrade whose coat they had shared 
as pillow lay cold in death by morning. While Drummond's 
men bury the dead in heaps and carry the wounded to To- 
ronto, the invaders have retreated with their wounded to Fort 
Erie. 

It now became the dauntless Drummond's aim to expel the 
enemy from Fort Erie. Five days after the battle of Lundy's 
Lane he had moved his camp halfway between Chippewa and 
Fort Erie ; but in addition to its garrison of two thousand. 
Fort Erie is guarded by three armed schooners lying at anchor 
on the lake front. Captain Dobbs of Drummond's forces makes 
the first move. At the head of seventy-five men, he deploys 
far to the rear of the fort through the woods, carrying five flat- 
boats over the forest trail eight miles, and on the night of the 
1 2th of August slips out through the water mist towards the 
American schooners. 

" Who goes .'' " challenges the ships' watchman. 

" Provision boats from Buffalo," calls back the Canadian 
oarsman ; and the rowboats pass round within the shadow of 
the schooner. A moment later the American ships are boarded. 
A trampling on deck calls the sailors aloft ; but Dobbs has 
mastered two vessels before the fort wakes to life with a rush 
to the rescue. 

Delay means almost inevitable loss to Drummond ; for Pre- 
vost will send no more reenforcements, and the Americans are 
daily strengthening F'ort Erie. Bastions of stone have been 
built. Outer batteries command approach to the walls, and 
along the narrow margin between the fort and the lake earth- 
works have been thrown up, mounted with cannon elbowing to 
the water's edge. Taking advantage of the elation over Dobbs' 
raid on the schooners, Drummond plans a night assault on the 
r5th of August. Rain had been falling in splashes all day. 
The fort trenches were swimming like rivers, and it may be men- 
tioned that Drummond's camp was swimming too, boding ill 
for his men's health. One of the foreign regiments was to lead 



ASSAULT AT FORT ERIE 377 

the assault round by the lake side, while Drummond and his 
nephew rushed the bastions. It will be remembered these 
foreign regiments of Napoleonic wars were composed of the 
offscourings of Europe. The fighters were to depend " on bayo- 
net alone, giving no quarter." Splashing along the rain-soaked 
road in silence and darkness, scaling ladders over shoulders, 
bayonets in hand, the foreign troops came to the earthwork 
elbowing out into the lake. This was passed by the men wading 
out in the lake to their chins ; but the noise was overheard by 
the fort sentry, and a perfect blaze of musketry shattered the 
darkness and drove the mercenaries back pellmell, bellowing 
with terror. A few of the English and Canadian troops pressed 
forward, only to find that they could not reach within ladder dis- 
tance of the walls at all, for spiked trees had been placed above 
the trenches in a perfect crisscross hurdle of sharpened ends. 
In old letters of the period one reads how the trenches were 
literally heaped with a jumbled mass of the dead. The other 
attacking columns fared almost as badly. One of the bastions 
had been entered by the cannon embrasures, Drummond, Junior, 
shouting to "give no quarter — give no quarter," when, from 
the cross firing in the courtyards, the powder magazine below 
this bastion was set on fire, and exploded with a terrific crash, 
killing the assailants almost to a man. In all, — killed, wounded, 
missing, — the assault cost Drummond's army nine hundred men. 
September proved a rainy month. Drummond's camp became 
almost a marsh, and the health of the troops compelled a move 
to higher ground. It was then the Americans sallied out in 
assault. Neither side could claim victory, but the skirmish 
cost each army more than five hundred men. Sir James Yeo 
now comes sailing up Lake Ontario with some of the sixteen 
thousand troops sent from England. The weather became un- 
favorable to movement on either side, — rain and sleet continu- 
ously. Drummond foresaw that the season would compel the 
abandonment of Fort Erie, and on November 5, a scout came in 
with word that the invaders had crossed to the American side 
and Fort Erie had been blown up. 



378 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

While Drummond is fighting for the very life of Canada 
along the Niagara frontier, the war continues in desultory 
fashion elsewhere. Kentucky riflemen raid western Ontario 
from Detroit to Port Dover. Up on the lakes is a story of 
the war that reads like a page from border raiders. Ameri- 
can fur traders destroy Sault Ste. Marie. Canadian fur traders 
retaliate by swooping on Mississippi fur posts. Out on the 
Pacific Coast an P^nglish gunboat has captured John Jacob 
Astor's fur post on the Columbia; and now in the fall of 1814 
the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal are conveying from 
Astor's fort the furs, worth millions of dollars, in canoes across 
the Upper Lakes to Ottawa River. Two armed American 
schooners, hiding on the north shore of Lake Huron, lie in wait 
for the gay raiders of the Northwest Company ; but at the 
Sault the Nor' west voyageurs get wind of the danger. They, 
in turn, hide their canoes in some of the blue coves of the 
north shore. Then, stealing out at night, in canoes with muffled 
paddles, the Nor' westers come on one schooner while the watch 
is asleep. They board her, bayonet the crew, " pinion some of 
the wounded to the decks," and with the captured vessel sidle 
up to the other vessel, and, before she is aware of the new mas- 
ters on board, have captured her too. Then, scalps flaunting 
at the prows of their canoes, the Nor' west fur traders gayly 
go their way. Down at Lake Champlain occurs the great fiasco 
of the war, — the blot on Canada's escutcheon. Prevost with 
ten thousand reenforcements has been ordered by the English 
Governor to proceed from Montreal against the Americans by 
both water and land. While an English fleet attacks the Ameri- 
cans, Prevost is to lead the troops against Plattsburg. But the 
Canadian fleet meets terrible disaster. The commander is killed 
by a rebounding cannon ball just as the action begins ; and 
twelve of the gunboats manned by the hired foreigners desert 
en masse. The rest of the fleet is literally destroyed. Instead 
of seconding attack by a battle on land, Prevost sits behind 
his trenches waiting for the little fleet to win the battle for him ; 
and when the fleet is defeated, Prevost's courage sinks with the 



END OF FUTILE WAR 379 

sinking ships. He gathers up his troops and retreats in a scare of 
haste, — such a fright of unseemly, unsoldierly haste that nearly 
one thousand of his soldiers desert in sheer disgust. Down at 
Nova Scotia are raid and counter-raid too. The British and 
American fleets wage fierce war that is not part of Canada's 
story ; but in the contest the public buildings of Washington 
are burned in retaliation for the burning of Newark ; and down 
at New Orleans the English suffer a crushing defeat. 

Meanwhile the peace commissioners have been at work ; and 
the war that ought never to have taken place, that settled not 
one jot of the dispute which caused it, was closed by the Treaty 
of Ghent, Christmas Eve of 18 14. All captured forts, all plun- 
der, all prisoners, are to be restored. Michilimackinac and Fort 
Niagara and Astoria on the Columbia go back to the United 
States ; but of " impressment " and " right of search " and 
" embargo of neutrals " not a word. The waste of life and hap- 
piness accomplished not a feather's weight unless it were the 
lesson of the criminal folly of a war between nations akin in 
aim and speech and blood. 



CHAPTER XV 

FROM 1812 TO 1846 

When Sir Alexander MacKenzie, the discoverer, went home 
to retire on an estate in Scotland, he found the young nobleman 
and philanthropist. Lord Selkirk, keenly interested in accounts 
of vast, new, unpeopled lands, which lay beyond the Great 
Lakes. A change in the system of farming, which dispossessed 
small farmers to turn the tenantries into sheep runs, had caused 
terrible poverty in Scotland at this period. Here in Scotland 
were people starving for want of land. There in America were 
lands idle for lack of people. Selkirk had already sent out some 
colonists to the Lake St. Clair region of Ontario and to Prince 
Edward Island, but what he heard from MacKenzie turned his 
attention to the new empire of the prairie. Then in Montreal, 
where he had been dined and wined by the Northwest Company's 
" Beaver Club," he had heard still more of this vast new land, 
of its wealth of furs, of its untimbered fields, where man had 
but to put in the plowshare to sow his crop. The one great 
obstruction to settlement there would be the claims of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company to exclusive monopoly of the country ; but 
as Selkirk listened to the descriptions of the Red River Valley 
given by Colin Robertson, who had been dismissed by the Nor'- 
westers, he thought he saw a way of overcoming all difficulties 
which the fur traders could put in the way of settlement. 

Owing to competition Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from two 
hundred and fifty to fifty pounds sterling a share. On returning 
to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay 
stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie ; but 
when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization 
first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partner- 
ship in speculation, and besought William MacGillivray to go on 

380 



skj;kirk'.s coi.oNV 



;8i 



the open market and buy against Selkirk to defeat the plans for 
settlement. What with shares owned by his wife's family of Col- 
ville-Wedderburns, and those he had himself purchased, Selkirk 
now owned a controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company. 

Early in iSii the Company deeds to Lord Selkirk the coun- 
try of Red River Valley, exceeding in area the British Isles and 
extending, through the ignorance of its donors, far south into 
American territory. Colin Robertson, the former Nor' wester, 
who first interested Selkirk in Red River, has meanwhile been 
gathering together a party of 
colonists. Miles MacDonell, re- 
tired from the Glengarry Regi- 
ment, has been appointed by 
Selkirk governor of the new 
colony. 

What of the Nor'westers while 
these projects went forward ? 
Writes MacGillivray from Lon- 
don, where he has been stirring 
up enmity to Selkirk's project, 
" Selkirk must be driven to aban- 
don his prpjeet at ajiy eost, for 
his eohyny i^'oiihi prove utterly 
destructive of our fur trade!' 
How he purposed doing this will 

be seen. Writes Selkirk to the governor of his colony, Miles 
MacDonell : " The N'orthwesi Company must be compelled to quit 
my lands. If they refuse, they nuLSt be treated as poachers." Sel- 
kirk believed that the Hudson's Bay Company charter to the 
Great Northwest was legal and valid. He believed that the vast 
territory granted to him was legally his own as much as his parks 
in Scotland. He believed that he possessed the same right to 
expel intruders on this territory as to drive poachers from his 
own Scotch parks. It was the spirit of feudalism. As for the 
Nor'westers, let us look at their rights. They disputed that the 
charter of the Hudson's Bay Company applied beyond the bounds 




SELKIRK 



382 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

of Hudson Bay. Even if it did so apply, they pointed out that 
by the terms of the charter it appHed only to lands not possessed 
by any other Christian power ; and who would dispute that French 
fur traders and Nor'westers, as their successors, had ascended 
the streams of the interior long before the Hudson's Bay men ? 
It was the spirit of democracy. It needed no prophet to foresee 
when these two sets of claims came together there would be a 
violent clash. 

It is evening in the little harbor of Stornoway, off the Hebri- 
des, north of Scotland, July 25, 181 1. Waning midsummer has 
begun to shorten the long days ; and lying at anchor in the twi- 
light a few yards offshore are the three Hudson's Bay Company 
boats, outward bound. For a week the quiet little fishing ham- 
let has been in a turmoil, for Governor Miles MacDonell and 
Colin Robertson have ordered the Selkirk settlers here — 129 
of them, 70 farmers, 59 clerks — to join the Hudson's Bay boats 
as they swing out westward on their far cruise to the north, and 
the atmosphere has literally been on fire with vexations created 
by spies of the Northwest Company. In the first place, as the 
settlers wait for the ships coming up from London, trouble 
makers pass from group to group scattering a miserable little 
sheet called "The Highlander," warning "the deluded people" 
against going to "a polar land of Indian hostiles." Besides, 
dark hints are uttered that the settlers are not wanted for colo- 
nists at all, but for armed battalions to fight the Nor'westers 
for the Hudson's Bay Company, in proof whereof the prophets 
of evil point ominously to the cannon and munitions of war on 
board the three old fur boats. Then there is too much whisky 
afloat in Stornoway that week. Settlers are taken ashore and 
farewelled and farewelled and farewelled till unable to find their 
way down to the rowboats, and then they are easily frightened 
into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the settlers 
who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell 
can keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in 
advance and are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the ex- 
cise officer here is a friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates 



TROUBLES ON PASSAGE 383 

endless trouble rowing round and round the boats, bawling . . . 
bawling out ... to know " if all who are embarking are going of 
their own free will," till the ship's hands, looking over decks, 
become so exasperated they heave a cannon ball over rails, which 
goes splash through the bottom of the harbor officer's rowboat 
and sends him cursing ashore to dispatch a challenge for a duel to 
Governor MacDonell. MacDonell sees plainly that if he is to 
have any colonists left, he must sail at once. Anchors up and 
sails out at eleven that night, the ships glide from shore so unex- 
pectedly that one faint-heart, desperately resolved on flight, has 
to jump overboard and swim ashore, while two other settlers, 
who have been lingering over farewells, must be rowed across 
harbor by Colin Robertson to catch the departing ships. Then 
Robertson is back on the wharf trumpeting a last cheer through 
his funneled hands. The Highlanders on decks lean over the 
vessel railings waving their bonnets. The Glasgow and Dublin 
lads indentured as clerks give a last huzza, and the Selkirk 
settlers are off for their Promised Land. 

As long ago Cartier's first colonists to the St. Lawrence had 
their mettle tested by tempestuous weather and pioneer hard- 
ships, so now the first colonists to the Great Northwest must 
meet the challenge that fate throws down to all who leave the 
beaten path. Though the season was late, the weather was ex- 
traordinarily stormy. Sixty-one days the passage lasted, the 
tubby old fur ships lying water-logged, rolling to the angry sea. 
MacDonell was furious that colonists had been risked on such un- 
seaworthy craft, but those old fur-ship captains, with fifty years 
ice battling to their credit, probably knew their business better 
than MacDonell. The fur ships had not been built for speed 
and comfort, but for cargoes and safety, and when storms came 
they simply lowered sails, turned tails to the wind, and rolled 
till the gale had passed, to the prolonged woe of the Highland 
landsmen, who for the first time suffered seasick pangs. Then, 
when Governor MacDonell attempted drills to pass the time, he 
made the discovery that seditious talk had gone the rounds of 
the deck. " The Hudson's Bay had no right to this country." 



\H 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



"The Nor' westers owned that country." "The Hudson's Bay- 
could n't compel any man to drill and fight." Selkirk could 
not give clear deed to their " lands," and much more to the 
same effect, all of which proved that some Nor' wester agent in 
disguise had been busy on board. 

September 24, amid falling snow and biting frost, the ships 
anchored at Five Fathom Hole off York Factory, Port Nelson. 



tf // L ^i y n 




rJWr. .tli.l.ll.- :>.:-^ fl. 















^'--^ma 




NELSON AND HAVES RIVERS 
(From Robson) 

The Selkirk settlers had been sixty-one days on board, and they 
were still a year away from their Promised Land. Champlain's 
colonists of Acadia and Quebec had come to anchorage on a 
land set like a jewel amid silver waters and green hills, but the 
Selkirk settlers have as yet seen only rocks barren of verdure as 
a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed hills of Hudson Straits, 
dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms of death itself, 
but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the floundering 



WINTER ON THE BAY 385 

walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain streams running 
from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the northern 
sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost 
religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile 
shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and 
plenty to abound. If pioneer struggles leave a something in the 
blood of the race that makes for national strength and perma- 
nency, the difference between the home finding of the West and 
the home finding of the East is worth noting. 

There were, of course, no preparations for the colonists at 
York Fort, for the factor could not know they were coming, or 
anything of Selkirk's plans, till the annual ships arrived. On 
the chance of finding better hunting farther from the fort, 
MacDonell withdrew his people from Hayes River, north across 
the marsh to a sheltered bank of the River Nelson. Winter had 
set in early. A whooping blizzard met the pilgrims as they 
marched along an Indian trail through the brushwood. There is 
a legend of Miles MacDonell, the governor, becoming benighted 
between York Fort and Nelson River, and losing his way in the 
storm. According to the story, he beat about the brushwood for 
twenty-four hours before he regained his bearings. Rude huts of 
rough timber and thatch roof with logs extemporized for berths 
and benches were knocked up for wintering quarters on Nelson 
River, and the next nine months were passed hunting deer for 
store of provisions, and building flatboats to ascend the interior. 
All winter a mutinous spirit was at work among the young clerks, 
which MacDonell, no doubt, ascribed to the machinations of 
Nor' westers ; but the chief factor quickly quelled mutiny by cut- 
ting off supplies, and all hands were ready to proceed when the 
fur brigades set out for the interior on the 21st of June, 18 12. 

Up Hayes River, up the whole length of Winnipeg Lake, 
then in August the flatboats are ascending the muddy current 
of Red River, through what is now Manitoba, and for the first 
time the people see their Promised Land. High banks fringed 
with maple and oak line the river at what is now Selkirk. 
Then the cliffs lower, and through the woods are broken gleams 



386 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

of the rolling prairie intersected by ravines, stretching far as eye 
can see, where sky and earth meet. From the lateness of the 
season one can guess that the river was low at the bowlder reach 
known as St. Andrew's Rapids, and that while the boats were 
tracked upstream the people would disembark and walk along 
the Indian trails of the west bank. There was no Fort Garry 
near the rapids, as a few years later. Buffalo-skin tepees alone 
broke the endless sweep of russet prairie and sky, clear swim- 
ming blue as the purest lake. Then the people are back aboard, 
laboring hard at the oar now, for they know they are nearing 
the end of their long pilgrimage. The river banks rise higher. 
Then they drop gradually to the flats now known as Point 
Douglas. Another bend in the sinuous red current, looping and 
curving and circling fantastically through the prairie, and the 
Selkirk settlers are in full view of the old Cree graveyard, — 
bodies swathed in skins on scaffolding, — down at the junction of 
the Assiniboine. Hard by they see the towered bastions of the 
Northwest Company's post. Fort Gibraltar. Somewhere between 
what are known to-day as Broadway Bridge and Point Douglas, 
the Selkirk settlers land on the west side. Chief Peguis and his 
Cree warriors ride wonderingly among the white-faced newcomers, 
marveling at men who have crossed the Great Waters " to dig 
gardens and work land." The barracks knocked up hastily 
is known after Selkirk's family name as Fort Douglas ; but the 
store of deer meat has been exhausted, and the colonists are 
on the verge of a second winter. They at once join the Plain 
Rangers, or Bois Brules (Burnt Wood Runners), half-breed de- 
scendants of French and Nor' west fur traders, who have become 
retainers of the Montreal Company. With them the Selkirk 
settlers proceed south to Pembina and the Boundary to hunt 
buffalo. No instructions had yet come to Red River of the 
Northwest Company's hostility to the colony, and the lonely 
Scotch clerks of Fort Gibraltar were glad to welcome men who 
spoke their own Highland tongue. Volumes might be written 
of this, the colonists' first year in their Promised Land: how the 
rude Plain Rangers conveyed them to the buffalo hunt in their 



FIRST WINTER ON RED RIVER 387 

creaking Red River carts, — carts made entirely of wood, hub, 
tire, axle, and all, or else on loaned ponies ; how when storm 
came the white settlers were welcomed to the huts and skin 
tents of the French half-breeds, given food and buffalo blankets ; 
how many a young Highlander came to grief in the wild stam- 
pede of his first buffalo hunt ; how when the hunters returned 
to Fort Gibraltar (Winnipeg), on Red River, with store enough 
of pemmican for all the fur posts of the Nor* westers, many a 
wild happy winter night was passed dancing mad Indian jigs 
to the piping of the Highland piper and the crazy scraping 



,^-^^i' 



.V 




FORT GARRY, RED RIVER SETTLEMENT 

of some Frenchman's fiddle ; how w^hen morning came, in a 
gray dawn of smoking frost mist, a long line of the colonists 
could be seen winding along the ice of Red River home to Fort 
Douglas, Piper Green or Hector McLean leading the way, still 
prancing and blowing a proud national air ; how wdien spring 
opened, ten-acre plots were assigned to each settler, close to the 
fort at what were known as the Colony Buildings, and one hun- 
dred-acre farms farther down the river. All this and more are 
part of the story of the coming of the first colonists to the Great 
Northwest. The very autumn that the first settlers had reached 
Red River in 1812 more colonists had arrived on the boats at 



uS8 



CANADA: illK luMPlRK OF THE iNOR'l'H 



Hudson Bay. These did not reach Red River till October of 
1812 and the spring of 181 3. By 18 13, and on till 18 17, more 
colonists yearly came. The story of each year, with its plot and 
counterplot, I have told elsewhere. Spite of Nor' westers' threats, 
spite of the fact there would be no market for the colonists when 
they had succeeded in transforming wilderness prairie into farms, 
Selkirk's mad dream of empire seemed to be succeeding. 



The cardinal mistake in the contest between Hudson's Bay 
Company and Nor' westers, between feudalism and democracy. 




^~.f(t'^ 






^ 



FORT douc;las 

was now committed by the governor of the colony. Miles 
MacDonell. The year 18 13 had proved poor for the buffalo 
hunters. Large numbers of colonists were coming, and provi- 
sions were likely to be scarce. Also, note it well, while the War 
of 18 1 2 did not cut off supplies through Hudson Bay to the 
English Company, it did threaten access to the West by the 
Great Lakes, and cut off all supplies by way of Detroit and 
Lake Huron for the Nor' westers. Was MacDonell scoring a 
point against the Nor'westers, when they were at a disadvan- 
tage ? Who can answer.? Selkirk had ordered him to expel the 



FIRST CONFLICT 389 

Nor'westers from his lands, and if the violent contest had not 
begun in this way, it was bound to come in another. What 
MacDonell did was issue a proclamation in January of 18 14, 
forbidding taking provisions from Selkirk's territory of Assini- 
boia. It practically meant that the Plain Rangers must not 
hunt buffalo in the limits of modern Manitoba, and must not 
sell supplies to the Nor'westers. It also meant that all the upper 
posts of the Nor'westers — the fur posts of Athabasca and 
British Columbia, which depended on pemmican for food — would 
be without adequate provisions. The Plain Rangers were en- 
raged beyond words, and doubly outraged when some Hudson's 
Bay men began seizing buffalo meat at Pembina River, which 
was beyond the limits of Selkirk's territory. Writes Peter Fidler, 
one of the Hudson's Bay factors, "7/" JUacDoncH only perse- 
veres, he will starve the Norivesters out." 

One can guess the anger in the annual meeting of the Nor'- 
westers at Fort William in July of 18 14. Like generals on field 
of war they laid out their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United 
Empire Loyalist officer of the 18 12 War, is to don his red regi- 
mentals and proceed to Red River, where his knowledge of the 
Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk settlers. 
'■'■ NotJiing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy 
some'' wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. 
Such was the mood of the Nor'westers when they came back 
from their annual meeting on Lake Superior to Red River, and 
MacDonell fanned this mood to dangerous fury by threatening 
to burn the Nor'westers' forts to the ground unless they moved 
from Selkirk's territory. For the present Duncan Cameron 
contents himself with striking up a warm friendship with the 
Highlanders of the settlement and offering to transport two 
hundred of them free of cost to Eastern Canada. MacDonell 
seizes still more provisions from northwest forts. Cameron, 
the Nor' wester, comes back from the annual meeting of 18 15 
still more bellicose. He carries the warrant to arrest Governor 
Miles MacDonell for the seizure of those provisions. Mac- 
Donell, safe behind the palisades of Fort Douglas, laughs 



390 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



the warrant to scorn ; but it is another matter when the Plain 
Rangers ride across the prairie from Fort Gibraltar armed, and 
pour such hot shot into Fort Douglas that the colonists, frenzied 
with fear, huddle to the fort for shelter. To insure the safety 
of his colonists, MacDonell surrenders to the Nor' westers and 
is sent to Eastern Canada for a trial which never takes place. 
No sooner has Governor MacDonell been expelled than Cuth- 
bert Grant, warden of the Plain Rangers, rides over to the 
colony and warns the colonists to flee for their lives, from 
Indians enraged at " these land workers spoiling the hunting 
fields." What the Indians thought of this defense of their rights 
is not stated. They were silent and unacting witnesses of the 
unedifying spectacle of white men ready to fly at each other's 
throats. It was too late for the colonists to reach Hudson Bay 
in time for the annual ships of 1815, so the houseless people 
dispersed amid the forests of Lake Winnipeg, where they could 
be certain of at least fish for food. 

Word of the two hundred settlers having been moved from 
Red River by the Nor'westers, of MacDonell's forcible expul- 
sion, and of the dispersion of the rest of the colony had, of 
course, been sent to Selkirk and his agents in both Montreal 
and London. Swift retaliation is prepared. Colin Robertson, 
who speaks French like a Canadian and knows all the Nor' west 
voyageurs of the St. Lawrence, is sent to gather up two hundred 
P"rench boatmen under the very noses of the Nor'westers at 
Montreal. With these Robertson is to invade the far-famed 
Athabasca, whence come the best furs, the very heart of the 
Nor'westers' stamping ground. Robert Semple is appointed 
governor of the colony on Red River, with instructions to resist 
the aggressions of the Nor'westers even to the point of "rt 
shock that may be felt from Montreal to Athabasca!' Selkirk 
himself comes to Canada to interview the Governor General 
about military forces to protect his colony. 

Robertson, with his two hundred voyageurs for Athabasca, 
follows the old Ottawa trail of the French explorers, from the 
St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, and from the Great Lakes to 



NOR'WESTERS RALLY TO DEFENSE 



591 



Red River by way of Winnipeg Lake. Whom does he find on the 
shores of tlie lake but Selkirk's dispersed colonists ! Ordering 
John Clarke, an old campaigner of Astor's company on the Co- 
lumbia, to lead the two hundred French voyageurs on up to Atha- 
basca, Colin Robertson rallies the colonists together and leads 
them back to Red River for the winter of 181 5-18 16. Feeling 
sure that he had destroyed Selkirk's scheme root and branch, 
Cameron has remained at Fort Gibraltar with only a few men. 



SKETCH 

CITY OF 

MAyiTOB. 



THE 



NNIPEG 




<iMmiMm\Y'^ 






|IJj 

2JL 







\'-yJ i\ III "I 



_J_|JJ 



i " i.;.i.-; 



7t 



-^.•^:"S>f^%^-^" 














SKETCH OF THE CITY OF WINNIPEG, SHOWING THE 
SITES OF THE EARLY FORTS 

when back to the field comes Robertson, stormy, capable, robust, 
red-blooded, fearless, breathing vengeance on Selkirk's foes. 

By the spring of 18 16 the tables have been turned with a 
vengeance. Cameron, the Nor'wester, has been seized and sent 
to Hudson Bay to be expelled from the country. Fort Gibral- 
tar has been pulled down and the timbers used to strengthen 
Fort Douglas, whose pointed cannon command all passage up 
and down Red River. It was hardly to be supposed that the 
haughty Nor'westers would submit to expulsion without a blow. 
From Athabasca, from New Caledonia, from Qu'Appelle . . . 
they rally their doughtiest fighters under Cuthbert Grant, the 



\92 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OP^ THE NORTH 



MONTHEAL^^Jl, 
EXPRESS by 
WAY of LWINNIPES' 



■^X, 



>' 



half-breed Plain Ranger. From Montreal and Fort William come 
spurring the leading partners, with one hundred and seventy 
French-Canadian bullies, and a brass cannon concealed under oil- 
cloth in a long boat. The object of the Plain Rangers is to meet 
the up-coming partners with supplies for the year ; but is that 

any reason for the 
riders who are 
striking eastward 
from Assiniboine 
to Red River, 
decking them- 
selves out in war 
paint and strip- 
ping like savages 
before battle.? The 
object of the part- 
ners is to meet the 
Plain Rangers on 
Red River ; but is 
that any reason for 
bringing a cannon 
concealed under 
oilcloth all the way 
from Lake Supe- 
rior .'' Or do men 
fighting a life-and- 
death struggle for 
the thing the world 
calls success ever acknowledge ])Iain motives within themselves 
at all ? Is it not rather the blind brute instinct of self-protection, 
forfend what may } 

" Listen, white men ! Beware ! Beware ! " the Cree chief 
Peguis warns Governor Semple. What means the spectacle of 
white brothers, who preach peace, preparing for war over a few 
beaver pelts ? Chief Peguis cannot understand, except this is 
the way of white men. 



From ASSINiBO ■ 



,^^":^' 



RED RIVER SETTLEMENT, 1S16-1820 



THE S'IT)RA[ CATHERS 393 

And now, unluckily for Governor Semple, he quarrels with 
his adviser, Colin Robertson. Robertson, from his early train- 
ing in Northwest ranks, reads the signs, and is for striking a 
blow before the enemy can strike him. Semple is still talking 
peace. Robertson leaves Red River in disgust, and departs for 
Hudson Bay to take ship for England. The Plain Rangers, it 
may be explained, have uttered the wild threat that if they 
" can catch Robertson," they will avenge the destruction of 
Fort Gibraltar " by skinning him alive and feeding him to the 
dogs." Also it is well known, Nor' westers of Ou'Appelle have 
muttered angry prophecies about "the ground being drenched 
with the blood of the colonists." 

Still Semple talks peace, which is a good thing in its place ; 
but this is n't the place. 

" My Governor ! My Governor ! " pleads an old hunter of the 
Hudson's Bay with Semple; "are you not afraid.? The half- 
breeds are gathering to kill you ! " 

Semple laughs. Pshaw ! He has law on Jiis side. Law ! What is 
law } The old hunter of the lawless wilds does n't know that word. 
That word does n't come as far west as the Pays iT en Haiit. 

It is sunset of June 18, 18 16. Old chief Peguis comes again 
to the Hudson's Bay fort on Red River. 

"Governor of the gard'ners ! " he solemnl}- warns; "gov- 
ernor of the land workers and gard'ners, listen! ..." Not 
much does he add, after the fashion of his race. Only this, 
'■'■Let me bring my warriors to protect yon f^' 

Semple laughs at such fears. 

It is sunset of June 19. A soft west wind has set the prairie 
grass rippling like a green sea between the fort and the sun 
hanging low at the western sky line. A boy on the lookout 
above one of the bastion towers of Fort Douglas suddenly 
shouts, " The half-breeds are coming ! " 

Semple ascends the tower and looks through a field glass. 
There is a line of sixty or seventy horsemen, all armed, not 
coming to the fort, but moving diagonally across from the 
Assiniboine to the Red towards the colony. And then, north 



394 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

towards the colony, is wildest clamor, — people in ox carts, peo- 
ple on horseback, people on foot, stampeding for the shelter of 
the fort. And up to this moment absolutely nothing has occurred 
to create this terror. 

" Let twenty men follow me," orders Semple ; and he marches 
out, followed by twenty-seven armed men. 

As they wade through the waist-high hay fields they meet 
the fleeing colonists. 

" Keep your back to the river ! " shouts one colonist, convoy- 
ing his family. "They are painted. Governor! Don't let them 
surround you." 

Semple sends back to the fort for a cannon to be trundled out. 

Young Lieutenant Holte's gun goes off by mistake. Semple 
turns on him with fury and bids him have a care : there is to be 
no firing. 

The half-breeds have turned from their trail and are coming 
forward at a gallop. 

" There 's Grant, the Plain Ranger, Governor ! Let me shoot 
him," pleads one Hudson's Bay man. 

" God have mercy on our souls ! " mutters one of the colo- 
nists, counting the foe ; " but we are all dead men." 

All the world knows the rest. At a knoll where grew some 
trees, a spot now known in Winnipeg on North Main Street as 
Seven Oaks, Grant, the Ranger, sent a half-breed, Boucher, 
forward to parley. 

" What do you want .'' " demands Semple. 

" We want our fort ! " 

" Go to your fort, then ! " 

" Rascal ! You have destroyed our fort ! " 

" Dare you to speak so to me } Arrest him ! " 

Boucher slips from his saddle. The Plain Rangers think he 
has been shot. Instantaneously from both sides crashes musketry 
fire. Semple falls with a broken thigh. Before Grant can con- 
trol his murderous crew or obtain aid for the wounded governor, 
a scamp of a half-breed has slashed the fallen man to death. 
Two or three Hudson's Bay men escape through the long grass 



THE NOR'WESTERS VICTORIOUS 



395 



and swim across Red River. Two or three more save themselves 
by instant surrender. For the rest of the twenty-seven, they He 
where they have fallen. They are stripped, mutilated, cut to 
pieces. Only one Nor'wester is killed, only one wounded. 

Later, in order to save the lives of the settlers. Fort Douglas 
is surrendered. For a second time the colonists are dispersed. 
Before going down Red River in flatboats two of the Hudson's 
Bay people go out with Chief Peguis by night and bury the 
dead ; but they have no time to dig deep graves, and a few days 
later the wolves have ripped up the bodies. 

Near Lake Winnipeg the ileeing colonists meet the Northwest 
partners with their one hundred and seventy men. No need to 
announce what the spectacle of the terrified colonists means. A 
wild whoop rends the air. " Thank Providence it was all over be- 
fore we came," writes one devout Nor'wester ; " for we intended 
to storm the fort." Both crews pause. The Nor'westers interro- 
gate the settlers. Semple's private papers are seized. Also, two 
Hudson's Bay men who took part in the Seven Oaks fight are 
arrested, to be carried on down to Northwest headquarters on 
Lake Superior. Then the settlers go on to Lake Winnipeg. 

At the various camping places on the way down to Fort 
William, those two Hudson's Bay prisoners overhear strange 
threats. It is night on the Lake of the Woods. Voices of 
Northwest partners sound through the dark. They are talking 
of Selkirk coming to the rescue of his people with an armed 
force. Says the wild voice of a Nor'wester whose brother had 
been killed by a Hudson's Bay man some years before, " There 
are fine quiet places along Winnipeg River if he comes this 
way." . . . Then scraps of conversation. . . . Then, " The half- 
breeds could capture him when he is asleep." . . . Then words 
too low to be heard. . . . Then, "They could have the Indians 
shoot him." . . . Then in voice of authority restraining the wild 
folly of a bloodthirst for vengeance, " Things have gone too far, 
but we can throw the blame on the Indians." 

The wild words of a man gone mad for revenge must not be 
taken as the policy of a great commercial company. 



396 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Meantime, where was Selkirk ? He had arrived in Montreal. 
Secret coureur, whose adventures I have told elsewhere, had 
carried him word of the dangers impending over his colony. He 
at once appealed to the Governor General for a military force to 
protect the settlers, but it must be recalled how Upper and 
Lower Canada were to be governed under the Act of 1791. 
There were to be the governor, the legislative council appointed 
by the crown, and the representative assembly. The legislative 
council was entirely dominated by the Northwest Company. Of 
the different Quebec courts, there was scarcely a judge who 
was not interested directly or indirectly in the Northwest Com- 
pany. Lord Selkirk could obtain no aid which would conflict 
with that company's policy. Then Selkirk petitioned the Gov- 
ernor that, in view of the threats against himself, he might be 
granted the commission of a justice of the peace and permission 
to take a personal bodyguard at his own cost to the west. 
These requests the Governor granted. 

Thereupon, Selkirk gathers up some two hundred of the 
De Meuron and De Watteville regiments, mercenaries dis- 
banded after the War of 18 12, and sets out for the west. Not 
aware that Robertson has left Red River, he sends him word 
to keep the colonists together and to e.xpect help by way of 
the states from the Sault in order to avoid touching at the 
Nor' westers' post at Fort William. The coureur with this mes- 
sage is waylaid by the Nor' westers, but Selkirk himself, pre- 
ceded by his former governor. Miles MacDonell, has gone only 
as far as the Sault when word comes back of the Seven Oaks 
massacre. What to do now } He can obtain no justice in East- 
ern Canada. Two justices of the peace at the Sault refuse to 
be involved in the quarrel by accompanying him. Selkirk goes 
on without them, accompanied by the two hundred hired sol- 
diers ; but instead of proceeding to Red River by Minnesota, 
as he had first planned, he strikes straight for Fort William, 
the headquarters of the Nor' westers. 

He arrives at the fort August 12, only a few days after the 
Northwest i)artners had come down from the scene of the 



SI'.I.KIRK TO THE RESCUE 



597 



massacre at Red River. Cannon are planted opi)ositc Fort Wil- 
liam. Things have "gone too far." The Nor' westers capitulate 
without a stroke. Then as justice of the peace, my Lord Selkirk 
arrests all the partners but one and sends them east to stand 
trial for the massacre of 
Seven Oaks. The one 
partner not sent east was 
a fuddled old drunkard 
long since retired from 
active work. This man 
now executes a deed of 
sale to my Lord Selkirk 
for Fort William and its 
furs. The man was so in- 
toxicated that he could 
not write, so the afore- 
time governor. Miles 
MacDonell, writes out 
the bargain, which one 
could wish so great a 
philanthropist as Selkirk 
had not touched with 
tongs. Before midwinter 
of 1817 has passed, the 
De Meuron soldiers have 
crossed Minnesota and 
gone down Red River 
to Fort Douglas. One 
stormy night they scale 
the wall and bundle the 
Northwest usurpers out, 
bag and baggage. 

July of 18 1 7 comes Selkirk himself to the Promised Land. 
There is no record that I have been able to find of his thoughts 
on first nearing the ground for which so much blood had been 
shed, and for which he himself was yet to suffer much; but 





f 


! 




[ 

) 


^..^^. L _ 


:/ 


/ 




\ 


/ 


-A 




MONUMENT TO COMMEMOR.ATE THE M.ASSACRE 
OF SEVEN OAKS 



398 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF J'HE NORTH 

one can v^enture to say that his most daring hope did not grasp 
the empire that was to grow from the seed he had planted. He 
meets the Indians in treaty for their lands. He greets his colo- 
nists in the open one sunny August day, speaking personally to 
each and deeding over to them land free of all charge. "This 
land I give for your church," he said, standing on the ground 
which the cathedral now occupies. " That plot shall be for 
your school," pointing across the gully; "and in memory of 
your native land, let the parish be called Kildonan." 

Of the trials and counter trials between the two companies, 
there is not space to tell here. Selkirk was forced to pay 
heavy damages for his course at Fort William, but the courts 
of Eastern Canada record not a single conviction against the 
Nor'westers for the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk retired 
shattered in health to Europe, where he died in 1820. The 
same year passed away Alexander MacKenzie, his old-time rival. 

The truth is, each company had gone too far and was on the 
verge of ruin. From Athabasca came the furs that prevented 
bankruptcy, and whichever company could drive the other from 
Athabasca could practically force its rival to ruin or union. 
When Colin Robertson had rallied the dispersed colonists from 
Lake Winnipeg, he had left John Clarke to conduct the two 
hundred Canadian voyageurs to Athabasca for the Hudson's 
Bay Company. Clarke had been a Nor' wester before he joined 
Astor, and was a born fighter, idolized by the Indians. So con- 
fident was he of success now that he galloped his canoes up 
the Saskatchewan without pause to gather provisions. Once 
on the ground on Athabasca Lake, he divided his party into 
two or three bands and sent them foraging to the Nor'westers' 
forts and hunting grounds up Peace River, down Slave Lake, 
at Athabasca itself. Weakened by division and without food 
to keep together, his men fell easy prey to the w^ily Nor'- 
westers. Of those on Slave Lake eighteen died from starva- 
tion. Those on Peace River were captured and literally whipped 
out of the country, signing oaths never to return. Those at 



BANDITTI WARFARE IN ATHABASCA 399 

Athabasca being leading officers were held prisoners. Mean- 
while the Hudson's Bay Company is defeated at Seven Oaks 
and victorious at Fort William. The Nor'westers at Athabasca 
were keen to keep tl^e frightened Indians of the north ignorant 
that Selkirk had triumphed at Fort William, but the news 
traveled over the two thousand miles of prairie in that strange 
hunter fashion known as "moccasin telegram," and the story 
is told how the captured Hudson's Bay officers let the secret 
out for the benefit of the Indians now afraid to carry their hunt 
to a Hudson's Bay man. 

Revels and all-night carousals marked the winter with the 
triumphant Nor'westers of Athabasca Lake. Often, when wild 
drinking songs were ringing in the Nor'westers' dining hall, the 
Hudson's Bay men would be brought in to furnish a butt for 
their merciless victors. One night, when the hall was full of 
Indians, one of the Northwest bullies began to brawl out a song 
in celebration of the Seven Oaks affair. 

"The H. B. C. came up a hill, and up a hill they came, 
The H. B. C. came up the hill, but douni they went acjain." 

Tired of their rude horseplay, one of the Hudson's Bay 
officers spoke up : " Y' hae niver asked me for a song. I hae a 
varse o' me ain compaesin." 

Then to the utter amaze of the drunken listeners and aston- 
ishment of the Indians, the game old officer trolled off this stave : 

"But Selkirk brave went /// a hill, and to Fort William came ! 
When in he popped and out from thence could not be driven again." 

The thunderstruck Nor' wester leaped to his feet with a yell : 
" A hundred guineas for the name of the men who brought that 
news here." 

" A hundred guineas for twa lines of me ain compaesin ! Ex- 
travagant, sir," returns the canny Scot. 

From accounts held by the Hudson's Bay Company's Mon- 
treal lawyers it is seen that Clarke's expedition cost the Company 

;^20,000. 



400 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Before the massacre of Seven Oaks Colin Robertson had 
gone down to Hudson Bay in high dudgeon with Semple, intend- 
ing to take ship for England ; but that fall the ice drive pre- 
vented one ship from leaving the bay, and Robertson was 
stranded at Moose Factory for the winter, whither coureurs 
brought him word of the Seven Oaks tragedy and Selkirk's 
victory at Fort William. Taking an Indian for guide, Robert- 
son set out on snowshocs for Montreal, following the old Ottawa 
trail traversed by Radisson and Iberville long ago. Montreal 
he found in a state of turmoil almost verging on riot over the 
imprisonment of the Northwest partners, whom Selkirk had 
sent east. Nightly the goals were illuminated as for festivals. 
Nightly sound of wandering musicians came from the cell 
windows, where loyal friends were serenading the imprisoned 
partners. They were released, of course, and acquitted from 
the charge of responsibility for the massacre of Seven Oaks. 

Presently Robertson finds himself behind the bars for his part 
in destroying Fort Gibraltar and arresting Duncan Cameron. 
He too is acquitted, and he tells us frankly that a private 
arrangement had been made beforehand with the presiding 
judge. Probably if the Nor' westers had been as frank, the same 
influence would explain their acquittal. 

Robertson found himself free just about the time Lord Sel- 
kirk came back from Red River by way of the Mississippi in 
order to avoid those careful plans for his welfare on the part of 
the Nor' westers at " the quiet places along Winnipeg River." 
The Governor of Canada had notified members of both com- 
panies unofficially that the English government advised the rivals 
to find some basis of union, which practically meant that if the 
investigations under way were pushed to extremes, both sides 
might find themselves in awkward plight ; but the fight had 
gone beyond the period of pure commercialism. It was now a 
matter of deadly personal hate between man and man, which, 
I am sorry to say, has been carried down by the descendants 
of the old fighters almost to the present day. Each side hoped 
to drive the other to bankruptcy ; and the last throes of the 



IN ATHABASCA 



401 



deadly struggle were to be in Athabasca, the richest fur field. 
While Selkirk is fighting his cause in the courts, he gives 
Robertson carte blanche to gather two hundred more French 
voyageurs and proceed to the Athabasca. 

Midsummer of 18 19 finds the stalwart Robertson crossing 
Lake Winnipeg to ascend the Saskatchewan. At the mouth of 
the Saskatchewan a miserable remnant of terrified men from 
the last Athabasca expedition is added to Robertson's party ; 




TRACKING ON ATHABASCA RIVER 

and John Clarke, breathing death and destruction against the 
Nor'westers, goes along as lieutenant to Robertson. Every- 
where are signs of the lawless conditions of the fur trade. 
Not an Indian dare speak to a Hudson's Bay man on pain of 
horsewhipping. Instead of canoes gliding up and down the 
Saskatchewan like birds of passage, reign a silence and soli- 
tude as of the dead. Though Robertson bids his voyageurs 
sing and fire off muskets as signals for trade, not a soul comes 
down to the river banks till the fleet of advancing traders is 
well away from the Saskatchewan and halfway across the 
heio-ht of land towards the Athabasca. 



402 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



The amazement of the Nor'westers at Fort Chippewyan in 
Athabasca when Robertson pulled ashore at the conglomeration 
of huts known as Fort Wedderburn, may be guessed. Two or 
three of the partners ran down to the shore and called out that 
they would like to parley ; but John Clarke, filled with memory 
of former outrages and rocking the canoe in his fury so that it 
almost upset, met the overtures with a volley of stentorian abuse 
that sent the Nor'westers scampering and set Robertson laugh- 
ing till the tears ran down his cheeks. 

The change of spirit on the part of the Nor'westers was 
easily explained. The most of their men were absent on the 
hunting field. In a few weeks Robertson had his huts in order 
and had dispatched his trappers down to Slave Lake and west- 
ward up Peace River. Then, in October, came more Nor'west 
partners from Montreal. The Nor'westers were stronger now 
and not so peacefully inclined. Nightly the French bullies, well 
plied with whisky, would come across to the Hudson's Bay fort, 
bawling out challenge to fight ; but Robertson held his men in 
hand and kept his powder dry. 

Early on the morning of October the i ith, Robertson's valet 
roused him from bed with word that a man had been acci- 
dentally shot. Slipping a pistol in his pocket and all unsus- 
picious of trickery, Robertson dashed out. It happened that 
the most of his men were at a slight distance from his fort. Be- 
fore they could rally to his rescue he was knocked down, dis- 
armed, surrounded by the Nor'westers, thrown into a boat, 
and carried back to their fort a captive. In vain he stormed 
almost apoplectic with rage, and tried to send back Indian 
messengers to his men. The Nor'westers laughed at him good- 
naturedly and relegated him to quarters in one room of a log 
hut, where sole furnishings were a berth bed and a fireplace 
without a floor. Robertson's only possessions in captivity were 
the clothes on his back, a jackknife, a small pencil, and a note- 
book ; but he probably consoled himself that his men were 
now on guard, and, outnumbering the Nor'westers two to one, 
could hold the ground for the Hudson's Bay that winter. As 



ROBERTSON ESCAPES 403 

time passed the captive Robertson began to wrack his brains 
how to communicate with his men. It was a drinking age ; and 
the fur traders had the reputation of capacity to drink any other 
class of men off their legs. Robertson feigned an unholy thirst. 
Rapping for his guard, he requested that messengers might be 
sent across to the Hudson's Bay fort for a keg of liquor. It 
can be guessed how readily the Nor' westers complied ; but 
Robertson took good care, when the guard was absent and the 
door locked, to pour out most of the whisky on the earth floor. 
Then taking slips of paper from his notebook, he cut them in 
strips the width of a spool. On these he wrote cipher and 
mysterious instructions, which only his men could understand, 
giving full information of the Nor' westers' movements, bidding 
his people hold their own, and ordering them to send messages 
down to the new Hudson's Bay governor at Red River, — Wil- 
liam Williams, — to place his De Meuron soldiers in ambush 
along the Grand Rapids of the Saskatchewan to catch the 
Northwest partners on their way to Montreal the next spring. 
These slips of paper he rolled up tight as a spool and ham- 
mered into the bunghole of the barrel. Then he plastered clay 
over all to hide the paper, and bade the guard carry this keg of 
whisky back to the H. B. C. fort ; it was musty, Robertson com- 
plained ; let the men rinse out the keg and put in a fresh supply ! 

All that winter Robertson, the Hudson's Bay man, captive 
in the Nor'westers' fort, sent weekly commands to his men by 
means of the whisky kegs ; but in the spring his trick was dis- 
covered, and the angry Nor'westers decided he was too clever 
a man to be kept on the field. They would ship him out of the 
country when their furs were sent east. 

On the way east he succeeded in escaping at Cumberland 
House. Waiting only a few hours, he launched out in his canoe 
and followed on the trail of the Northwest partners, on down 
to see what would happen at Grand Rapids, where the Sas- 
katchewan flows into Lake Winnipeg. A jubilant shout from a 
canoe turning a bend in the river presently announced the news : 
"All the Northwest partners captured!" When Robertson 



404 



CANADA: THK EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



came to Grand Rapids he found Governor Williams and the 
De Meurons in possession. Cannon pointed across the river 
below the rapids. The Northwest partners were prisoners in a 
hut. The voyageurs were allowed to go on down to Montreal 
with the furs. This last act in the great struggle ended tragic- 
ally enough. What was to be done with the captured partners } 
They could not be sent to Eastern Canada. Pending investiga- 
tions for the union of the companies, Governor Williams sent 
them to York Factory, Hudson Bay, whence some took ship to 
England, others set out overland on snowshoes for Canada ; but 
in the scuffle at Grand Rapids, Frobisher, one of the oldest 
partners, with a reputation of great cruelty in his treatment of 
Hudson's Bay men, had been violently clubbed on the head 
with a gun. From that moment he became a raving maniac, 
and the Hudson's Bay people did not know what to do with 
such a captive. He must not be permitted to go home to Eng- 
land. His condition was too terrible evidence against them ; so 
they kept him prisoner in the outhouses of York Factory, with 
two faithful Nor'wester half-breeds as personal attendants. 

One dark cold night towards the first of October Frobisher 
succeeded in escaping through the broken bars of his cell win- 
dow. A leap took him over the pickets. By chance an old 
canoe lay on Hayes River. With this he began to ascend stream 
for the interior, paddling wildly, laughing wildly, raving and 
singing. The two half-breeds knew that a voyage to the inte- 
rior at this season without snowshoes, food, or heavy clothing, 
meant certain death ; but they followed their master faithfully 
as black slaves. Wherever night found them they turned the 
canoe upside down and slept under it. Fish lines supplied food, 
and the deserted hut of some hunter occasionally gave them 
shelter for the night. Winter set in early. The ice edging of 
the river cut the birch canoe. Abandoning it, they went for- 
ward on foot. From York Fort, Hudson Bay, the nearest North- 
west post was seven hundred miles. By the end of October 
they had not gone half the distance. Then came one of those 
changes so frequent in northern climes, — a sunburst of warm 



FROBISHER'S DF:ATH 



405 



weather following the first early winter, turning all the frozen 
fields to swimming marshes, and the travelers had no canoe. 
By this time Frobisher was too weak to walk. As his body 
failed his mind rallied, and he begged the two half-breeds to 
go on without him, as delay meant the death of all three ; but 
the faithful fellows carried him by turns on their backs. They 
themselves were now so emaciated they were making but a 
few miles a day. Their moccasins had been worn to tatters, 
and all three looked more like skeletons than livins; men. Then. 



PLAXS of YOKKand PRTNCJ: ofWAI.ESS I'ORTft 



/^•.',V.V, **ijj 



'^ I- 








2 ^ T/:>. 



-n tH<^rf,y<:'ii,<f<i I r. /:.':.Wi.' hit// ,'/'J/<-^i/f<i>ry//\ 




PL.'^NS OF YORK AND PRINCE OF WALES FORTS 

the third week of November, Frobisher could go no farther, 
and the servants' strength failed. Building a fire in a sheltered 
place for their master, the two faithful fellows left Frobisher 
somewhere west of Lake Winnipeg. Two days later they crept 
into a Northwest post too weak to speak, and handed the North- 
westers a note scrawled by Frobisher, asking them to send a 
rescue party. Frobisher was found lying across the ashes of the 
fire. Life was extinct. 

In 1820 the union of the companies put an end to the ruinous 
and criminal struggle. George Simpson, afterwards knighted, 



4o6 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



who has been sent to look over matters in Athabasca, is appointed 
governor, and Nicholas Garry, one of the London directors, 
comes out to appoint the officers of the united companies 
to their new districts. The scene is one for artist brush, — the 
last meeting of the partners at Fort William, Hudson's Bay 
men and Nor' westers, such deadly enemies they would not 
speak, sitting in the great dining hall, glowering at each other 
across tables : George Simpson at one end of the tables, pomp- 
ously dressed in ruffles 
and satin coat and silk 
breeches, vainly endeav- 
oring to keep up suave 
conversation ; Nicholas 
Garry at the other end 
of the table, also very 
pompous and smooth, but 
with a look on his face 
as if he were sitting 
above a powder mine, the 
Highland pipers dressed 
in tartans, standing at 
each end of the hall, fill- 
ing the room with the 
drone and the skurl of 
the bagpipes. 

By the union of the 
companies both sides 
avoided proving their rights in the law courts. Most important 
of all, the Hudson's Bay Company escaped proving its charter 
valid ; for the charter applied only to Hudson Bay and adjacent 
lands " not occupied by other Christian powers " ; but on the 
union taking place, the British government granted to the new 
Hudson's Bay Company license of exclusive monopoly to all the 
Indian territory, meaning (i) Hudson Bay Country, (2) the inte- 
rior, (3) New Caledonia as well as Oregon. In fact, the union left 
the fur traders ten times more strongly intrenched than before. 




Sn< GEORGE SIMPSON, GOVERNOR OF HUDSON S 
BAY COMP.ANV, 1820 



THE PACIFIC EMPIRE 407 

By the new arrangement Dr. John McLoughhn was appointed 
chief factor of the western territories known as Oregon and New 
Caledonia. When the War of 18 12 closed, treaty provided that 
Oregon should be open to the joint occupancy of English and 
American traders till the matter of the western boundary could 
be finally settled. Oregon roughly included all territory between 
the Columbia and the Spanish fort at San Francisco, namely, 
Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, 
parts of Montana and Wyoming. It was cheaper to send provi- 
sions round by sea to the fur posts of New Caledonia, in mod- 
ern British Columbia, than across the continent by way of the 
Saskatchewan; so McLoughlin's district also included all the 
territory far as the Russian possessions in Alaska. 

This part of the Hudson's Bay Company's history belongs to 
the United States rather than Canada, but it is interesting to 
remember that just as the French fur traders explored the Miss- 
issippi far south as the Gulf of Mexico, so English fur traders 
first explored the western states far south as New Spain. This 
western field was perhaps the most picturesque of all the Hud- 
son's Bay Company's possessions. 

Fort Vancouver, ninety miles inland from the sea on the 
Columbia, was the capital of this transmontane kingdom, and 
yearly till 1846 the fur brigades set out from Fort Vancouver 
two or three hundred strong by pack horse and canoe. Well- 
known officers became regular leaders of the different brigades. 
There was Ross, who led the Rocky Mountain Brigade inland 
across the Divide to the buffalo ranges of Montana. There 
was Ogden, son of the Chief Justice in Montreal, who led 
the Southern Brigade up Snake River to Salt Lake and the 
Nevada desert and Humboldt River and Mt. Shasta, all of 
which regions except Salt Lake he was first to discover. There 
was Tom McKay, son of the McKay who had crossed to the 
Pacific with MacKenzie, who, dressed as a Spanish cavalier, led 
the pack-horse brigades down the coast past the Rogue River 
Indians and the Klamath Lakes to San Francisco, where Dr. 
Glen Rae had opened a fort for the Hudson's Bay Company. 



4o8 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Then there was the New Caledonia Brigade, two hundred strong, 
which set out from Fort Vancouver up the Columbia in canoes 
to the scream of the bagpipes through the rocky canyons of the 
river. Close to the boundary, shift was made from canoe to 
pack horse, and, leaving the Columbia, the brigade struck up the 
Okanogan Valley to Kamloops, bound for the bridle trail up 

Fraser River. This bri- 
gade, in later days, was 
under Douglas, who be- 
came the knighted gov- 
ernor of British Columbia. 
Tricked out in gay rib- 
bons, the long file of pack 
ponies, two hundred with 
riders, two hundred more 
with packs, moved slowly 
along the forest trail with 
a drone as of bees hum- 
ming in midsummer. So 
well did ponies know the 
way that riders often fell 
asleep, to be suddenly 
jarred awake by the 
horses jamming against 
a tree, or running under 
a low branch to brush 
riders off, or hurdle-jump- 
ing over windfall. Each 
of these brigades has its 
own story, and each story would fill a book. For instance. Glen 
Rae at San Francisco has a difficult mission. The company has 
a plan to take over the debts of Me.xico to British capitalists and 
exchange them for California. Glen Rae is sent to watch matters, 
but he commits the blunder of furnishing arms to the losing side 
of a revolution. The debt for the arms remains unpaid. Glen 
Rae suicides, and the company withdraws from California. 




JOHN McLOUGHLIN 



SF.CEDE FROM OREGON 



409 



Presently come American settlers and missionaries over the 
mountains. The American government delays settling that 
treaty of joint occupancy, for the more American settlers that 
come, the stronger will be the American claim to the territory. 
McLoughlin helps the settlers who would have starved without 
his aid, and McLoughlin receives such sharp censure from his 
company for this that he resigns. When the American settlers 
set up a provisional government, the foolish cry is raised, " 54, 40 
or fight," which means the Americans claim all the way up to 
Alaska, and for this there is no warrant either through their own 
occupation or discovery. The boundary is compromised by the 
Treaty of Oregon in 1846 at the 49th parallel. 

When settlers come, fur-bearing animals leave. Long ago the 
Hudson's Bay Company had foreseen the end and moved the 
capital of its Pacific Empire up to Victoria. A string of fur 
posts extends up Fraser River to New Caledonia. 



CHAPTER XVI 

FROM 1820 TO 1807 

It will be recalled that on the coming of the United Empire 
Loyalists to Canada, the form of government was changed by 
the Constitutional Act of 1791, dividing the country into Upper 
and Lower Canada, the government of each province to con- 
sist of a governor, the legislative council, and the assembly. 
Unfortunately, self-government for the colonics was not yet a 
recognized principle of English rule. While the assemblies of 
the two provinces were elected by the people, the power of the 
assemblies was practically a blank, for the governor and coun- 
cil were the real rulers, and they were appointed by the Crown, 
which meant Downing Street, which meant in turn that the two 
Canadas were regarded as the happy hunting ground for incom- 
petent ofifice seekers of the great English parties. From the 
governor general to the most insignificant postal clerk, all were 
appointed from Downing Street. Influence, not merit, counted, 
which perhaps explains why one can count on the fingers of 
one hand the number of governors and lieutenants from 1791 
to 1 84 1 who were worthy of their trust and did not disgrace 
their position by blunders that were simply notorious. Prevost's 
disgraceful retreat from Lake Champlain in the War of 18 12 is 
a typical example of the mischief a political jobber can work 
when placed in position of trust ; but the life-and-death struggle 
of the war prevented the people tiu'ning their attention to ques- 
tions of misgovernment, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say 
that the Act of 1791 reduced Canadian affairs to the chaos of 
a second Ireland and retarded the progress of the country for 
a century. 

It has become customary for English writers to slur over the 
disorders of 1837 as the results of the ignorant rabble following 

410 



HOW THE FAIVULY COMPACT WORKKD 411 

the bad advice of the hot-heads, MacKenzic and Papineau ; but 
it is worth remembering that everything the rabble fought for, 
and hanged for, has since been incorporated in Canada's con- 
stitution as the very woof and warp of responsible government. 

Let us see how the system worked out in detail. 

After the War of 18 12 Prevost dies before court-martial can 
pronounce on his misconduct at Plattsburg, and Sir Gorden 
Drummond, the hero of Fort Erie's siege, is sworn in. 

Canada is governed from Downing Street, and it is my Lord 
Bathurst's brilliant idea that forever after the war there shall be a 
belt of twenty miles left waste forest and prairie between Canada 
and the United States, presumably to prevent democracy roll- 
ing across the northern boundary. Fortunately the rough horse 
sense of the frontiersman is wiser than the wisdom of the British 
statesman, and settlement continues along the boundary in spite 
of Bathurst's brilliant idea. 

Those who fought in the War of 18 12 are t(^ be rewarded by 
grants of land, — rewarded, of course, by the Crown, which means 
the Governor ; but the Governor must listen to the advice of his 
councilors, who are appointed for life ; and to the heroes of 
18 1 2 the councilors grant fifty acres apiece, while to them- 
selves the said councilors vote grants of land running from 
twenty thousand to eighty thousand acres apiece. 

After the war it is agreed that neither Canada nor the United 
States shall keep war vessels on the lakes, except such cruisers 
as shall be necessary to maintain order among the fisheries ; 
but the credit for this wise arrangement does not belong to the 
councils at Toronto or Quebec, for the suggestions came from 
Washington. 

As the legislati\-e councilors are appointed for life, they con- 
trol enormous patronage, recommending all appointments to 
government positions and meeting any applicants for office, 
who are outside the "-family'' ring, with the curt refusal that 
has become famous for its insolence, "■no one hut a t^cntlcvian'' 

Judges are appointed by favor. So are local magistrates. So 
are collectors at the different ports of entry. Smaller cities like 



412 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Kingston are year after year refused incorporation, because in- 
corporation would confer self-government, and that would oust 
members of the "■family compact,'" who held positions in these 
places. 

Officeholders are responsible to the Crown only, not to the 
people. Therefore when Receiver General Caldwell of Quebec 
does away with ;^96,ooo, or two years' revenue of Lower Canada, 
he accounts for the defalcation to his friends with the explana- 
tion of unlucky investments, and goes scot free. 

Quebec is a French province, but appointments are made 
in England; so that out of ;^7i,ooo paid to its civil serv- 
ants ;^58,ooo go to the English ofificeholders, ;^ 13,000 to 
French ; out of ^.^36,000 paid to judges only ;^8,ooo go to the 
French. 

And in Upper Canada, Ontario, it was even worse. In Que- 
bec there was always the division of French against English, 
and Catholic against Protestant ; but in Upper Canada " the 
family compact" of councilors against commoners was a solid 
and unbroken ring. When the assembly raises objections to 
some items of e.xpense sent down by the council, writes Lieu- 
tenant Governor Simcoe in high dudgeon, " I will send the ras- 
cals," meaning the commoners, "packing about their business," 
and he prorogues the House. 

Not all the governors and their lieutenants are as foolishly 
blind to the faults of the system as Simcoe. of Ontario. Sir 
John Sherbrooke of Quebec, who succeeds Drummond in Lower 
Canada, knows very well he is surrounded by a pack of thieves ; 
but they are his councilors, appointed for life, and there he is, 
bound to abide by their advice. Nevertheless, he kicks over 
traces vigorously now and tlien, like the old war horse that he 
is. The commissary general comes to him with word that ^600 
is missing from the military chest, and he needs a warrant for 
search. 

" Search, indeed ! " roars Sir John. "There's not the slight- 
est need ! Whenever there is a robbery in your department, it 
is among yourselves ! Go and find it ! " 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



413 



Curious it is how good men reared in the old school, where 
the masses exist for the benefit of the classes and the governed 
are to be allowed to exist only by favor of those who govern — 
curious how good men fail to read the sign of the times. Colonel 
Tom Talbot's settlement in West Ontario has, by 1832, increased 
to 50,000 people, and the mad harum-scarum of court days is 
becoming an old man. 
Talbot has been a legis- 
lative councilor for life, 
but it is not on record 
that he ever attended the 
council in Toronto. Still 
he views with high dis- 
favor this universal dis- 
content with " being 
governed." The secret 
meetings held to agitate 
for responsible govern- 
ment, Tom Talbot re- 
gards as " a pestilence " 
leading on to the worst 
disease from wh i c h 
humanity can suffer, 
namely, democracy. The 
old bear stirs uneasily in 
his lair, as reports come 
in of louder and louder 
demands that the colony 
shall be pcTinittcd to govern itself. What would become of 
kings and colonels and land grants by special favor, if colonies 
governed themselves .? Colonel Tom Talbot doffs his homespun 
and his coon cap, and he dons the satin ruffles of twenty- 
five years ago, and he mounts his steed and he rides pomp- 
ously forth to the market place of St. Thomas Town on St. 
George's Day of 1832. Bands play; flags wave; the country 
people from twenty miles round come riding to town. Banners 




SIR JOHN SHERBROOKE, GOVERNOR GENERAL 
OF CANADA, 1816-1818 



414 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

inscribed with " Loyalty to the Constitution " are carried at the 
head of parades. The venerable old colonel is greeted with 
burst after biu'st of shouting" as he comes prancing on horse- 
back up the hill. The band plays " the British Grenadiers." 
The Highland bagpipes skurl a welcome. Then the old man 
mounts the rostrum and delivers a speech that ought to be 
famous as an exposition of good old Tory doctrine : 

Some black sheep have slipped into my flock, and very black they are, 
and what is worse, they have got the rot, a distemper not known in this 
settlement till some I shall call for short " rebels " began their work of dark- 
ness under cover of organizing Blanked Cold Water Drinking Societies, 
where they meet at night to communicate their poisonous schemes and 
circulate the infection and delude the unwary! Then they assumed a more 
daring aspect under mask of a grievance petition, which, when it was placed 
before me, I would not take the trouble to read, being aware it was trash 
founded on falsehood, fabricated to create discontent. 

At the end of a half hour's tirade, of which these lines are a 
sample, the good old Tory raised his hands, and in the words of 
the Church's benediction blessed his people and prayed Heaven 
to keep their minds untainted by sedition. 

Looking back less than a century, it is almost impossible 
to believe that the colonel's speech — it cannot be called rea- 
soning — was applauded to the echo and regarded as a masterly 
justification of people " being governed " rather than governing 
themselves. 

Perhaps, after all, it was not so much the Constitution of 
Canada that caused the conflict as the clash between the old-time 
feudalism and the spirit of modern, aggressive democracy. The 
United States fon^^/it this question out in i yyG. Canada wrestled, 
it cannot be called ajig/it, the same cjuestion out in 1837. 

It is necessary to give one or two cases of individual perse- 
cution to understand how the disorders flamed to open rebellion. 

One Matthews, an officer of the 18 12 War, living on a pension, 
had incurred the distrust of the governing ring by expressing 
sympathy with the agitators. Now to be an agitator was bad 
enough in the eyes of " the fa mil y compact ^ but for one of their 



"LOYALTY CRY" 



415 



own social circle to sympathize with the outsiders was, to the 
snobocracy clique of the little city of ten thousand at Toronto, 
almost an unpardonable sin. Such sins were punished by social 
ostracism, by the grand dames of Toronto not inviting the offi- 
cer's wife to social functions, by the families of the upper clique 
literally freezing the sinner's children out of the foremost circles 
of social life. Many a Canadian family is proud to trace lineage 
back to some old lady of this tempestuous period, whose only 
claim to recognition is that she waged petty persecution against 
the heroes of Canadian progress. Now the annals of the times 
do not record that this special sinner's wife and children so suf- 
fered. At all events Matthews' spirits were not cast down by 
social snobbery. He continued to sympathize with the agitators. 
The ''family cojtipact " bided their time, and their time came a few 
months later, when a company of American actors came to 
Toronto. A band concert had been given. When the British 
national air struck up, all hats were off. Then some one called 
for " Yankee Doodle," and in compliment to the visitors, when 
the American air struck up, Matthews shouted out for " hats 
off." For this sin the legislative council ordered the lieutenant 
governor to cut off Matthews' pension, and, to the everlasting 
shame of Sir Peregrine Maitland, the advice was taken, though 
Matthews had twenty-seven years of service to his credit. Mat- 
thews appealed to England, and his pension was restored, so that 
in this case '■'■ tJic family compact for political reasons was pretend- 
ing to be more British than Great Britain. It was not to be the 
last occasion on which "the loyalty cry" was to be used as a 
political dodge. 

The persecution of Robert Gourlay was yet more outrageous. 
He had come to Canada soon after the War of 18 12, and in the 
course of collecting statistics for a book on the colony was quick 
to realize how Canada's progress was being literally gagged by 
the policy of the ruling clique. Gourlay attacked the local 
magistrates in the press. He pointed out that the land grants 
were notorious. He advocated bombarding the evils from two 
sides at once, by appealing to the home government and by 



4l6 ■ CANADA: THE EMPIRP: OF THE NORTH 

holding local conventions of protest. The pass to which things 
had come may be realized by the attitude of the council. It held 
that the colony must hold no communications with the imperial 
government except through the Governor General ; in other 
words, individual appeals not passing through the hands of the 
legislative council were to be regarded as illegal. It is sad to 
have to acknowledge that such a palpably dishonest measure 
was ever countenanced by people in their right minds. But " tJic 
family cojiipact'' went a step farther. It passed an order for- 
bidding meetings to discuss public grievances. This part of 
Canada's story reads more like Russia than America, and shows 
to what length men will go when special privileges rather than 
equal rights prevail in a country. Gourlay met these infamous 
measures by penning some witty doggerel, headed " Gagged, 
gagged, by Jingo! " The editor in whose paper Gourlay's writ- 
ings had appeared, was arrested, and the offending sheet was 
compelled to suspend. Gourlay himself is arrested for sedition 
and libel at least four times, but each time the jury acquits him. 
At any cost the governing" clique must get rid of this scribbling 
fellow, whose pen voices the rising discontent. An alien act, 
passed before the War of 1812, compelling the deportation of 
seditious persons, is revived. Under the terms of the act Gour- 
lay is arrested, tried, and sentenced to be exiled, but Gourlay 
declares he is not an alien. He is a British subject, and he re- 
fuses to leave the country. He is thrown in jail at Niagara," 
and for a year and a half left in a moldy, close cell. One dis- 
likes to write that this outrage on British justice was perpetrated 
under Chief Justice Powell, whose failure to obtain decisions 
from the jury in the Red River trials brought down such harsh 
criticism on the bench. At the end of twenty months Gourlay 
is again hauled before the jury and sentenced to deportation on 
pain of death if he refuses. He was calmly asked if he had any- 
thing to say, if there were any reason why sentence should not 
be pronounced. 

"Anything . . . to . . . say .'' Any reason . . . why . . . sen- 
tence . . . should not be pronounced.?" From 18 18 to 1820 



GOURLAY DRIVEN MAD 417 

Gouiiay had been having things " to say," had been giving good 
and sufficient reasons ivJiy sentence should not be pronounced ! 
The question is repeated : "Robert Gourlay stand up ! Have you 
anything to say ? " The court waits, Chief Justice Powell, be- 
wigged and wearing his grandest manner, all unconscious that 
the scene is to go down to history with blot of ignominy against 
his name, not Gourlay's. 

Gourlay's face twitches, and he breaks into shrieks of maniacal 
laughter. The petty persecutions of a provincial tyranny have 
driven a man, who is true patriot, out of his mind. As Gourlay 
drops out of Canada's story here, it may be added that the Eng- 
lish government later pronounced the whole trial an outrage, 
and Gourlay was invited back to Canada. 

If at this stage a man had come to Canada as governor, big 
enough and just enough to realize that colonies had sonic rights, 
there might have been remedy ; for the imperial government, 
eager to right the wrong, was misled by the legislative coun- 
cilors, and all at sea as to the source of the trouble. While men 
were being actually driven out of Canada by the governing ring 
on the charge of disloyalty, the colonial minister of England was 
sending secret dispatches to the Governor General, instructing 
him plainly that if independence was what Canada wanted, then 
the mother country, rather than risk a second war with the 
United States, or press conclusions with the Canadas themselves, 
would willingly cede independence. It is as well to be emphatic 
and clear on this point. // was not tlic tyranny of England that 
caused the tronbh^s of i8jj. It was the dishonesty of the ruling 
rings at Quebec and Toronto, and this dishonesty was possible 
because of the Constitutional Act of 1791. 

Unfortunately, just when imperial statesmen of the modern 
school were needed, governors of the old school were appointed 
to Canada. After Sir John Sherbrooke came the Duke of 
Richmond to Quebec, and his son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Maitland, 
as lieutenant governor to Ontario. Men of more courtly man- 
ners never graced the vice-regal chairs of Quebec and Toronto. 



4l8 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

Richmond, who was some fifty years of age, had won notoriety 
in his early days by a duel with a prince of the blood royal, 
honor on both sides being satisfied by Richmond shooting away 
a curl from the royal brow ; but presto, an Irish barrister takes 
up the quarrel by challenging Richmond to a second duel for 
having dared to fight a prince ; and here Richmond satisfies 
claims of honor by a well-directed ball aimed to wound, not kill. 
Long years after, when the duke became viceroy of Ireland, 
the Irishman appeared at one of Richmond's state balls. 

"Hah," laughed the barrister, "the last time we met, your 
Grace gave mc a ball." 

" Best give you a brace of 'em now," retorted the witty 
Richmond ; and he sent his quondam foe invitation to two 
more balls. 

Richmond it was who gave the famous ball before the defeat 
of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story of his daughter's love 
match with Sir Peregrine Maitland is of a piece with the rest 
of the romance in Richmond's life. Richmond and Maitland 
had been friends in the army, but when the duke began to ob- 
serve that his daughter, Lady Sarah, and the younger man 
were falling in love, he thought to discourage the union with 
a poor man by omitting Maitland's name from invitation lists. 
When Lady Sarah came downstairs to a ball she surmised that 
Maitland had not been invited, and, withdrawing from the assem- 
bled guests, drove to her lover's apartments. She married 
Maitland without her father's consent, but a reconciliation had 
been patched up. Father and son-in-law now came to Canada 
as governor and lieutenant governor. 

The military and social life of both unfitted them to appre- 
ciate the conditions in Canada. Socially both were the lions 
of the hour. As a man and gentleman Richmond was simply 
adored, and Quebec's love of all the pomp of monarchy was 
glutted to the full. No more distinguished governor ever played 
host in the old Chateau St. Louis ; but as rulers, as pacifiers, 
as guides of the ship of state, Richmond and Maitland were 
dismal failures. To them Canada's demand for responsible 



RICHMOND'S TRAGIC DEATH 



4IQ 



government seemed the ralh'ing cry of an impending republic. 
"We must overcome democracy or it will overcome us," pro- 
nounced Richmond. He failed to see that resistance to the 
demand for self-government would bring about the same results 
in Canada as resistance had brought about in the United States, 
and he could not guess — for the thing was new in the world's 
history ■ — that the grant 
of self-government would 
but bind the colony the 
closer to the mother 
land. 

It is sad to write of two 
such high-minded, well- 
intentioned rulers, that 
the worst acts of misgov- 
ernment in Canada took 
place in their regime. 

Richmond's death was 
as unusual as his life. 
Two accounts are given 
of the cause. One states 
that he permitted a pet 
dog to touch a cut in his 
face. The other account 
has it that he was bitten 
by a tame fox at a fair 
in Sorel, and the date of 
Richmond's death, late in August of 1819, exactly two months 
from the time he was bitten at Sorel, — which is the length of 
time that hydrophobia takes to develop in a growni person,- — 
would seem to substantiate the latter story. He was traveling 
on horseback from Perth to Richmond, on the Ottawa, and had 
complained of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. 
The sight of the stream brought the strange water delirium to 
Richmond, when he begged his attendants to take him quickly 
to Montreal. It need scarcely be explained here that hydrophobia 




THE FOURTH DUKE OF RICHMONO, GOVERNOR 
GENERAL OF CANADA, lSlS-1819 



420 



CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



is not caused by lack of water, but by contagious transmission. 
The feeling passed, as the first terrors of the disease are usually 
spasmodic, and the Governor was prcjceeding through the woods 
with his attendants, when he suddenly broke away deliriously, 
leading them a wild race to a farm shed. There he died during 
the night, cr)'ing out as the lucid intervals broke the delirium 
of his agonies : " For shame ! for shame Lenox ! Richmond, 
he a man ! Can you not bear it .'' " 

Public affairs are meanwhile passing from bad to worse. 
William Lyon MacKenzie has become leader of the agitators 
in his newspaper, TJie Advocate, of Toronto. A band of young 
vandals, sons of the ruling clique, wreck his newspaper ofifice 
and throw the type into Toronto Bay, but MacKenzie recovers 
$3000 damages and' goes on agitating. Four times he is pub- 
licly expelled from the House, and four times he is returned by 
the electors. What are they asking, these agitators, branded as 
rebels, expelled from the assembly, in some cases cast in prison 
by the councilors, in others threatened with death ? 

Control of public revenues. 

Reform in the land system. 

Municipal rights for towns and cities. 

The exclusion of judges from Parliament. 

That the council be directly responsible to the people 
rather than the Crown. 

Since 18 18 the reformers have been agitating to have wrongs 
righted, and for nineteen years the clique has prevented of^cial 
inquiry, gagged the press, bludgeoned conventions out of exist- 
ence, and thrown leaders of opposition in prison. 

MacKenzie now makes the mistake of publishing in his papers 
a letter from the English radical Hume, advocating the freedom 
of Canada " from the baneful domination of the mother country." 
At once, with a jingo whoop, the loyalty cry is emitted by " tJie 
family cojn/^act." Is not this what they have been telling the 
Governor from the first, — these reformers are republicans in 



PATRIOTS OF THE. PLOW 



421 



disguise ? By trickery and manipulation they swing the next 
election so that MacKenzie is defeated. From that moment 
MacKenzie's tone changed. It may be that, losing all hope of 
reform, he became a republican. If this were treason, then the 
English ministers, who were advocating the same remedy, were 
guilty of the same treason. With MacKenzie, secretly and 
openly, are a host of sympathizers, — Dr. Rolph, Tom Talbot's 
old friend, come up from 
the London district to 
practice medicine in To- 
ronto, and Van Egmond, 
who has helped to set- 
tle the Huron Tract of 
the Canada Company, 
founded by John Gait, 
the novelist, and some 
four thousand others 
whose names MacKenzie 
has on a list in his car- 
pet bag. 

All the autumn of 1837 
Fitzgibbons, now com- 
mander of the troops in 
Toronto, hears vague ru- 
mors of farmers secretly 
drilling, of workmen ex- 
temporizing swords out 
of scythes, of old soldiers furbishing up their arms of the 1812 
War. What does it mean ? Sir Francis Bond Head, the new gov- 
ernor of Ontario, refuses to believe his own ears. Neither does 
t/ie family compact realize that there is any danger to their 
long tenure of power. They affect to sneer at these poor patriots 
of the plow, little dreaming that the rights which these poor 
patriots of the scythe swords are burning to defend, will, by and 
by, be the pride of England's colonial system. The story of 
plot and counter plot cannot be told in detail here ; it is too 




WILLIAM lAO.X A1A(, KKN/IK 



42 2 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

long-. But on the night of Monday, December 4, Toronto wakes 
up to a wild ringing of college bells. The rebel patriots have 
collected at Montgomery's Tavern outside Toronto, and are 
advancing on the city. 

Poor MacKenzie's plans have gone all awry. Four thousand 
patriots had pledged themselves to assemble at the tavern on 
December 7, but Dr. Rolph, or some other friend in the city, 
sends word that the date has been discovered. The only hope 
of seizing the city is for them to come sooner ; and MacKenzie 
arrives at the tavern on December 3, with only a few hundred 
followers, who have neither food nor firearms; and I doubt much 
if they had even definite plans ; of such there are no records. 
Before Van Egmond comes from Seaforth, doubt and dissen- 
sion and distrust of success depress the insin^gents ; and it 
does n't help their spirits any to have four Toronto scouts 
break through their lines in the dark and back again with word 
of their weakness, though they plant a fatal bullet neatly in the 
back of one poor loyalist. If they had advanced promptly on 
the 4th, as planned, they might have given Sir Francis Bond 
Head and Fitzgibbons a stiff tussle for possession of the city, 
for Toronto's defenders at this time numbered scarcely three 
hundred ; but during the days MacKenzie's followers delayed 
north of Yonge Street, Allan McNab came up from Hamilton 
with more troops. By Wednesday, the 6th, there were twelve 
hundred loyalist troops in Toronto ; and noon of the 7th, out 
marches the loyalist army by way of Yonge Street, bands play- 
ing, flags flying, horses prancing under Fitzgibbons and McNab. 
It was a warm, sunny day. From the windows of Yonge Street 
women waved handkerchiefs and cheered. At street corners 
the rabble shouted itself hoarse, just as it would have cheered 
MacKenzie had he conic down Yonge Street victorious. 

MacKenzie's sentries had warned the insurgents of the loyal- 
ists' coming. MacKenzie was for immediate advance. Van Eg- 
mond thought it stark madness for five hundred poorly armed 
men to meet twelve hundred troopers in pitched battle ; but it 
was too late now for stark madness to retreat. The loyalist 



DEFEAT OF PATRIOTS 



42, 



bands could be heard from Rosedale ; the loyalists' bayonets 
could be seen glittering in the sun. MacKenzie posted his men 
a short distance south of the tavern in some woods ; one hun- 
dred and fifty on one side of the road west of Yonge Street, 
one hundred on the other side. The rest of the insurgents, 
being without arms, did not leave the rendezvous. In the con- 
fusion and haste the tragic 
mistake was made of leav- 
ing MacKenzie's carpet 
bag with the list of pa- 
triots at the tavern. This 
gave the loyalists a com- 
plete roster of the agita- 
tors' names. 

F"ifteen minutes later 
it was all over with Mac- 
Kenzie. The big guns of 
the Toronto troops shelled 
the woods, killing one pa- 
triot rebel and wounding 
eleven, four fatally. In 
answer, only a clattering 
spatter of shots came 
from the rebel side. The 
patriots were in headlong 
flight with the mounted 
men of Toronto in pursuit. 

It was over with MacKenzie, but, as the sequence of events 
will show, it was not all over with the cause. A book of soldiers' 
yarns might be told of hairbreadth escapes, the aftermath of 
the rebellion. Knowing his side was doomed to defeat, Dr. 
Rolph tried to escape from Toronto. He was stopped by a 
loyalist sentry, but explained he was leaving the city to visit 
a patient. Farther on he had been arrested by a loyalist picket, 
when luckily a young doctor who had attended Rolph's medical 
lectures, all unconscious of MacKenzie's plot, vouched for his 




ALLAN iMcNAB 



424 CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

loyalty. Riding like a madman all that night, Rolph reached 
Niagara and escaped to the American frontier. A reward of 
;^iooo had been offered for MacKenzie dead or alive. He had 
waited only till his followers fled, when he mounted his big bay 
horse and galloped for the woods, pursued by Fitzgibbons' men. 
The big bay carried him safely to the country, where he wan- 
dered openly for four days. It speaks volumes for the stanch 
fidehty of the country people to the cause which MacKenzie rep- 
resented, that during these wanderings he was unbetrayed, spite 
of the ;^iooo reward. Finally he too succeeded in crossing 
Niagara. Van Egmond was captured north of Yonge Street, 
but died from disease contracted in his prison cell before he 
could be tried. Lount, another of the leaders, had succeeded 
in reaching Long Point, Lake Erie. With a fellow patriot, a 
French voyageur, and a boy, he started to cross Lake Erie in 
an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather. For two days 
and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves, the 
drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost ice- 
logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, 
and this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not 
break it. Weakening at each oar stroke, they at last saw the 
south shore of Lake Erie rise on the sky line ; but before the 
close-mufifled refugees had dared to hope for safety on the Amer- 
ican side, a strong south wind had sprung up that drove the boat 
back across the lake towards Grand River. To remain exposed 
longer meant certain death. They landed, were mistaken for 
smugglers, and thrown into jail, where Lount was at once 
recognized. 

In West Ontario one Dr. Buncombe had acted as MacKenzie's 
lieutenant. Allan McNab had come west with six hundred men 
to suppress the rebellion. Realizing the hopelessness of further 
resistance, Buncombe had tried to save his men by ordering 
them to disperse to their homes. He himself, with his white 
horse, took to the woods, where he lay in hiding all day — and 
it was a Canadian Becember — and foraged at night for ber- 
ries and roots. Judge Ermatinger gives the graphic story of 



BUNCOMBE'S ESCAPE 425 

Duncombe's escape. Starvation drove him to the house of a 
friend. The friend was out, and when the wife asked who he 
was, Duncombe laid his revolver on the table and made answer, 
" I am Duncombe ; and I must have food." Here he lay dis- 
guised so completely with nightcap, nightdress, and all, as the 
visiting grandmother of the family, that loyalists who saw his 
white horse and came in to search the house, looked squarely 
at the recumbent figure beneath the bedclothes and did not 
recognize him. Duncombe at last reached his sister's home near 
London. 

" Don't you know me ^ " he asked, standing in the open door, 
waiting for her recognition. In the few weeks of exposure and 
pursuit his hair had turned snow-white. 

His friends suggested that he cross to the American frontier 
dressed as a woman, and the disguise was so perfect, curls of 
his sister's hair bobbing from beneath his bonnet, that two loy- 
alist soldiers gallantly escorted the lady's sleigh across unsafe 
places in the ice. Duncombe waited till he was well on the 
American side, and his escorts on the way back to Sarnia. Then 
he emitted a yell over the back of the cutter, " Go tell your 
officers you have just helped Dr. Duncombe across ! '" 

Having lost the fight for a cause which events have since 
justified, it is not surprising that the patriots on the American 
frontier now lost their heads. They formed organizations from 
Detroit to Vermont for the invasion of Canada and the estab- 
lishment of a republic. These bands were known as " Hunter's 
Lodges." Rolph and Duncombe repudiated connection with 
them, but MacKenzie was head and heart for armed invasion 
from Buffalo. Space forbids the story of these raids. They 
would fill a book with such thrilling tales as make up the border 
wars of Scotland. 

The tumultuous year of 1837 closed with the burning of the 
Cayoliiic. MacKenzie had taken up quarters on Navy Island in 
Niagara River. The Caroline, an American ship, was being em- 
ployed t(^ convey guns and provisions to the insurgents' camp. 
On the Canadian side of the river camped Allan McNab with 



426 CANADA: THP: EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

twenty-five hundred loyalist troops. Looking across the river 
with field glasses, McNab sees the boat landing field guns on 
Navy Island for MacKenzie. 

" I say," e.xclaims the future Sir Allan, " this won't do ! Can't 
you cut that vessel out. Drew ? " addressing a young ofiicer. 

" Nothing easier," answers Drew. 

" Do it, then," orders McNab. 

In spite of the fact " nothing was easier," Drew's men came 
near disaster on their midnight escapade. The river below Navy 
Island was three miles wide, and only a mile and a half from the 
rapids above the Falls, with a current like a mill race. Secretly 
seven boats, with four men in each, set out at half past eleven, 
a few friends on the river bank wishing Drew Godspeed. Out 
from shore Drew draws his boats together, and tells the men 
the perilous task they have to do : if any one wishes to go back 
let him do so now. Not a man speaks. Halfway across, firing 
from the island drives two of the boats back. The rest get 
under shadow from the bright moonlight and go on. The roar 
of the Falls now became deafening, and some of the rowers 
called out they were being drawn down the center of the river 
astern. Drew fastens his eyes on a light against the American 
shore to judge of their progress. For a moment, though the men 
were rowing with all their might, the light ashore and the 
boats in mid-river seemed to remain absolutely still. Finally the 
boats gained an oar's length. Then a mighty pull, and all forge 
ahead. A strip of land hides approach to the Caroline. The 
Canadian boatmen lie in hiding till the moon goes down, then 
glide in on the Caroline, when Drew mounts the decks. Three 
unarmed men are found on the shore side. Drew orders them 
to land. One fires point-blank ; Drew slashes him down with 
a single saber cut. The rest of the crew are roused from sleep 
and sent ashore. The Caroline is set on fire in four places. She 
is moored to the shore ice; axes chop her free. She is adrift; 
Drew the last to jump from her flaming decks to his place in 
the small boats. The flames are seen from the Canadian side, 
and huge bonfires light up the Canadian shore ; by their gleam 



EXECUTION OF PATRIOTS 427 

Drew steers back for McNab's army, and is welcomed with 
cheers that spht the wcU<in. Slowly the flaming vessel drifted 
clown the channel to the Falls. Suddenly the lights went out ; 
the Caroline had either sunk on a reef or gone over the Falls. 
One man had been killed on the decks. As the vessel was 
American, and had been raided in American ports, the episode 
raised an international dispute that might in another mood have 
caused war. 

Lount and Matthews pay for the rebellion on the gallows, 
upon which the imperial government expressed regret that the 
Toronto Executive "found such severity necessary." Later, 
when " the Hunters' Lodges " raid Prescott, and Van Shoultz, 
the Polish leader, with nine others, is executed at Kingston, a 
great revulsion of feeling takes place against the fc-n}iily compact. 
The execution of the patriots did more for their cause than all 
their efforts of twenty years. The Canadian people had sup- 
ported the agitators up to the point of armed rebellion. That 
gave British blood pause, for the Britisher reveres the law next 
to God ; but when the governing ring began to glut its vengeance 
under cloak of loyalty that was another matter. After the exe- 
cution of Lount and Matthews the family compact could scarcely 
count a friend outside its own circle in Upper Canada. It is worth 
remembering that the young lawyer who defended Van Shoultz 
in the trial at Kingston was a John A. Macdonald, who later took 
foremost part in framing a new constitution for Canada. 

Affairs had gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost 
became war. Papineau was leader of the agitators, — Papineau, 
fiery, impetuous, elocjuent, followed by the bold boys in the 
bonnets blue, marching the streets of Montreal singing revolu- 
tionary songs and planting liberty trees. In Lower Canada, too, 
things have come to the pass where the agitators advocate armed 
resistance. From the first, in Quebec, the struggle has waged 
round two questions, — the exclusion of the French from the 
council, and the right of the colony to spend its own revenues ; but 
boil down the ninety-two resolutions of 1834, and the demands 



428 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as in Upper 
Canada, for complete self-government. A dozen clashes of 
authority lead up to the final outbreak. For instance, the House 
elects Papineau, the agitator, speaker. The Governor General 
refuses to recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved. 

Failing to obtain redress by constitutional methods, the agita- 
tors now advocate the right of a colony to abolish government 
unsuited to it. The constitutional party takes alarm and organizes 

volunteers. Papineau's party, 
early in 1837, begin violently 
advocating that all French 
magistrates resign their com- 
missions from the English gov- 
ernment. On Richelieu River 
and up in Two Mountains, 
north of Montreal, are the 
strongholds of the agitators, 
where men have been drilling, 
and the boys in the bonnets 
blue rioting through the vil- 
lages to the great scandal of 
parish priests. 

There are riots in Montreal 
early in November of 1837, and 
"the Sons of Liberty" are 
chased through the town. Then in the third week of November 
a troop of Montreal cavalry is sent to St. John's to arrest three 
agitators, who have been threatening a magistrate for refusing 
to resign his commission. The agitators are arrested and hand- 
cuffed, and at three in the morning the troops are moving along 
across country towards Longueuil with the prisoners in a wagon, 
when suddenly three hundred armed men rise on either side of 
the road to the fore. Shots are exchanged. In the confusion the 
prisoners jump from the wagon. This is not resistance to authority. 
It is open rebellion. Papineau intrusts the management of affairs 
in St. Eustache, north of Montreal, to Girod, a Swiss, and to 




L(JUIS I. PAPINEAU 



BLOODSHED IN QUEBEC 429 

Dr. Chenier, a local patriot, l^ajiineau himself and Dr. Nelson 
and O'Callaghan are down on the Richelieu at St. Denis. 

Take the Richelieu region first. Colonel Gore is to strike up 
the river southward to St. Denis. Colonel Wetherell is to cross 
country from Montreal and strike down the river north to St. 
Charles, thus hemming in the insurgents between Gore on the 
north and himself on the south. There are eight hundred rebels 
at St. Denis, one hundred and fifty armed, and twelve hundred 
at St. Charles. Papineau and O'Callaghan for safety's sake slip 
across the line to Swanton in Vermont. One could wish that, 
having led their faithful followers up to the sticking point of 
stark madness, the agitators had remained shoulder to shoulder 
with the brave fellows on the field. 

Colonel Gore came from Montreal by boat to the mouth of 
the Richelieu. At seven-thirty on the night of November 22 
two hundred and fifty troopers landed to march up the Richelieu 
road to St. Denis. Rain turning to sleet was falling in a deluge. 
The roads were swimming knee-deep in slush. Bridges had been 
cut, and in the darkness the loyalists had to diverge to fording 
places, which lengthened out the march twenty-four miles. At 
St. Denis was Dr. Nelson with the agitators in a three-story 
stone house, windows bristling with muskets. By dawn Papineau 
and O'Callaghan had fled, and at nine o'clock came Colonel 
Gore's loyalist troopers, exhausted from the march, soaked to 
the skin, their water-sagged clothes freezing in the cold wind. 
The loyalists went into the fight unfed, and with a whoop ; but 
it is not surprising that the peppering of bullets from the win- 
dows drove the troopers back, and Gore's bugles sounded re- 
treat. Unaware of Gore's defeat, one Lieutenant: Weir has been 
sent across country with dispatches. He is captured and bound, 
and, in a futile attempt to escape, shot and stabbed to death. 

Wetherell comes down the river from Chambly with three 
hundred men. He finds St. Charles village protected by out- 
works of felled trees, and the houses are literally loopholed 
with muskets ; but Wetherell has brought cannon along, and 
the cannon begin to sing on November 25. Then Wetherell's 



430 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



men charge through the village with leveled bayonets. The 
poor habitants scatter like frightened sheep ; they surrender ; 
one hundred perish. It is estimated that on both sides three 
hundred are wounded, though some English writers give the 
list of wounded as low as forty. Messengers galloped with news 

of the patriots' defeat at 
St. Charles to Dr. Nelson 
at St. Denis. The habit- 
ants fled to their homes. 
Nelson was left without 
a follower. He escaped 
to the woods, and for two 
weeks wandered in the 
forests of the boundary, 
exposed to cold and hun- 
ger, not daring to kindle 
a fire that would betray 
him, afraid to let himself 
sleep for fear of freez- 
ing to death. He was 
captured near the Ver- 
mont line and carried 
prisoner to Montreal. 

And still worse fared 
the fortunes of war with 
the patriots north of 
Montreal. Their defense 
and defeat were almost 





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m 


t 




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|B 




W/ / /^^m 


^K 


^ 


.3 


~ 



SIR JOHN CCJI.BOKNK, GOVKRNOR OF 
CANADA, 1S3S-1S41 



pitiable in childish ignorance of what war might mean. Boys' 
marbles had been gathered together for bullets. Scythes were 
carried as swords, and old flintlocks that had not seen service iox 
twenty years were taken down from the chimney places. With 
their bonnets blue hanging down their backs, rusty firearms 
over their shoulders, and the village fiddler leading the march, 
one thousand "Sons of Liberty" had paraded the streets of 
St. Eustache, singing, rollicking, speechifying, unconscious as 



CHENIER'S TRAGIC DEATH 



431 



children playing war that they were dancing to ruin above a 
volcano. Chenier, the beloved country doctor, is their leader. 
Girod, the Swiss, has come up to show them how to drill. They 
take possession of a newly built convent. Then on Sunday, the 
3d of December, comes word of the defeat down on the Riche- 
lieu. The moderate men plead with Chenier to stop now before 
it is too late ; but Chenier will not listen. Me knows the cause 
is right, and with the credulity or faith of a simple child hopes 
some mad miracle will win the day. Still he is much moved ; 
tears stream down his face. Then on December 14 the church 
bells ring a crazy alarm. The troops are coming, two thousand 
of them from Montreal under Sir John Colborne, the governor. 
The insurgent army melts like frost before the sun. Less than 
one hundred men stand by poor Chenier. At eleven-thirty the 
troops sweep in at both ends of the village at once. Girod, the 
Swiss commander, suicides in panic flight. Cooped up in 
the church steeple with the flames mounting closer round them 
and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier and his 
eighty followers call out : " We are done ! We are sold ! Let 
us jump ! " Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying 
bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the 
flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. 
Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy- 
two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the 
region, then set fire to all houses where loyalist flags are not 
waved from the windows. 

Matters have now come to such an outrageous pass that the 
British government can no longer ignore the fact that the colony 
has been goaded to desperation by the misgovernment of the 
ruling clique. Lord Durham is appointed special commissioner 
with extraordinary powers to proceed to Canada and investigate 
the whole subject of colonial government. One may guess that 
the ruling clique were prepared to take possession of the new 
commissioner and prime him with facts favorable to their side ; 
but Durham was not a man to be monopolized by any faction. 



432 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



When he arrived, in May of 1838, he quickly gave proof that 
he would follow his own counsels and choose his own council- 
ors. His hrst official declaration was practically an act of am- 
nesty to the rebels, eight only of the leading prisoners, among 
them Dr. Nelson, being punished by banishment to Bermuda, 
the rest being simply expelled from Canada. 

■ This act was tantamount to a declaration that the rebels 
possessed some rights and had suffered real grievances, and 

the governing rings in 
both Toronto and Que- 
bec took furious offense. 
Complaints against Dur- 
ham poured into the 
English colonial office, — 
complaints, oddly enough, 
that he had violated the 
spirit of the English Con- 
stitution by sentencing 
subjects of the Crown 
without trial. Though 
every one knew that in 
Canada's turbulent con- 
dition trial by jury was 
impossible, Durham's po- 
litical foes in England 
took up the cry. In ad- 
dition to political com- 
plaints were grudges against Durham for personal slight ; and it 
must be confessed the haughty earl had ridden roughshod over 
all the petty prejudices and little dignities of the colonial mag- 
nates. The upshot was, Durham resigned in high dudgeon and 
sailed for England in November of 1838. 

On his way home he dictated to his secretary, Charles Dul- 
ler, the famous report which is to Canada what the Magna 
Charta is to England or the Declaration of Independence to the 
United States. Without going into detail, it may be said that it 




LORIJ DUKHAM, SFKCIAL (.OM.MISSIONEK TO 
CANADA, 1S3S 



DURHAM GIVES CANADA A MAC^NA CHARTA 



4jj 



recommended complete self-goxernment for the colonies. As 
disorders had again broken out in Canada, the English govern- 
ment hastened to embody the main recommendations of Durham's 
report in the Union Act of 1840, which came into force a year 
later. By it Upper and Lower Canada were united on a basis 
of equal representation each, though Quebec's population was 
six hundred thousand to Ontario's five hundred thousand. 
The colonies were to have the entire management of their rev- 
enues and civil lists. The government was to consist of an 
Upper Chamber appointed by the Crown for life, a representa- 
tive assembly, and the governor with a cabinet of advisers 
responsible to the assembly. 

In all, more than seven hundred arrests had been made in 
Quebec Province. Of these all were released but some one hun- 
dred and thirty, and the state trials resulted in sentence of 
banishment against fifty, death to twelve. In modern days it is 
almost impossible to realize the degree of fanatical hatred gen- 
erated by this half century of misgovernment. Declared one of 
the governing clique's official newspapers in Montreal : " Peace 
must be maintained, even if we make the country a solitude. 
French Canadians must be swept from the face of the earth. . . . 
The empire must be respected, even at the cost of the entire 
French Canadian people." With such sentiments openly 
uttered, one may surely say that the Constitutional Act of 1791 
turned back the pendulum of Canada's progress fifty years, and 
it certainly took fifty more years to eradicate the bitterness 
generated by the era of misgovernment. 

With the Upper and Lower Canadas united in a federation of 
two provinces, it was a foregone conclusion that all parts of 
British North America must sooner or later come into the fold. 
It would be hard to say from whom the idea of confederation 
of all the provinces first sprang. Purely as a theory the idea 
may be traced back as early as 1791. The truth is, Destiny, 
Providence, or whatever we like to call that great stream of con- 
current events which carries men and nations out to the ocean 



434 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



highway of a larger life, forced British North America into the 
Confederation of 1867. 

In the first place, while the Union worked well in theory, it 
was exceedingly difficult in practice. Ontario and Quebec had 
equal representation. One was Protestant, the other Catholic ; 
one French, the other English. Deadlocks, or, to use the slang 
of the street, even tugs of war, were inevitable and continual. 
All Ontario had to do to thwart Quebec, or Quebec had to do 
to thwart Ontario, was to stand together and keep the votes 
solid. Coalition ministries proved a failure. 

In the second place, Ontario was practically dependent on the 
customs duties collected at Quebec ports of entry for a provincial 
revenue. The goods might be billed for Ontario ; Quebec col- 
lected the tax. 

Ontario was also dependent on Quebec for access to the sea. 
Which province was to pay for the system of canals being de- 
veloped, and the deepening of the St. Lawrence .'' 

Then the Oregon Treaty of 1846 had actually brought a cloud 
of war on the horizon. In case of war, there was the question 
of defense. 

Then railways had become a very live question. Quebec 
wanted connection with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. How 
was the cost of a railroad to be apportioned ? Red River was 
agitating for freedom from fur-trade monopoly. How were rail- 
ways to be built to Red River } 

Ontario's population in twenty years jumped past the mil- 
lion mark. Was it fair that her million people should have only 
the same number of representatives as Quebec with her half 
million .'' Reformers of Ontario, voiced by George Brown of 
T/ic Globe, called for "Rep. by Pop.," — representation by 
population. 

Civil war was raging in the United States, threatening to tear 
the Union to tatters. Why 1 Because the balance of power had 
been left with the states governments, and not enough authority 
centralized in the federal government. The lesson was not lost 
on struggling Canada. 



CONFEDERATION 



435 



England's declaration of free trade brought the colonies face to 
face with the need of some united action to raise revenue by tariff. 

Then the Hudson's Bay Company's license of monopoly over 
the fur trade of the west was nearing expiration. Should the 
license be renewed for another twenty years, or should Canada 
take over Red River as a new province, which was the wish of 
the people both east and 
west.? And if Canada did 
buy out the Hudson's 
Bay Company's vested 
rights, who was to pay 
down the cost ? 

Lastly, was John A. 
Macdonald, the young 
lawyer who had pleaded 
the defense of the pa- 
triot trials at Kingston 
in 1838, now a leading 
politician of the United 
Canadas, weary of the 
hopeless deadlocks be- 
tween Ontario and Que- 
bec. With almost a sixth 
sense of divination in 
reading the signs of the 
times in the trend of 
events, John A. Macdon- 
ald saw that Canada's 
one hope of becoming a 
national power lay in union, — confederation. The same thing 
was seen by other leaders of the day, by all that grand old 
guard known as the Fathers of Confederation, sent from the 
different provinces to the conference at Quebec in October 
of 1864. There the outline of what is known as the British 
North America Act was drafted, — in the main but an amplifi- 
cation of Durham's scheme, made broad enough to receive all 




JOHN A. MACDONALD 



436 CANADA : THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 

the provinces whenever they might decide to come into Con- 
federation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their 
provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. New- 
foundland is not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation 
is an accomplished fact. By 1871 the new Dominion has bought 
out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West, and 
Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links 
British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting 
field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new 
provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France. 

Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future 
for this Empire of the North ? That future is now in the making. 
It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. 
In the past Canada's makers dreamed greatly, and they dared 
greatly, and they took no heed of impossibles, and they spent 
without stint of blood and happiness for high aim. When Canada 
lost ground in the progress of the nations, as in the corrupt days 
of Bigot's rule during the French regime, or the equally corrupt 
days of t/ie family compact after the Conquest, it was because 
the altar fires of her ideals were allowed to burn low. 

It has been said that the past is but a rear light marking the 
back trail of the ship's passage. Say rather it is the search light 
on the ship's prow, pointing the way over the waters. 

To-day Canada is in the very vanguard of the nations. Her 
wheat fields fill the granaries of the world ; and to her ample 
borders come the peoples of earth's ends, bringing tribute, not 
of incense and frankincense as of old, but of manhood and 
strength, of push and lift, of fire and hope and enthusiasm and 
the daring that conquers all the difficulties of life ; bringing, 
too, all the outworn vices of an Old World, all the vicious 
instincts of the powers that prey in the Under World. Canada's 
prosperity is literally overflowing from a cornucopia of super- 
abundant plenty. Will her constitution, wrested from political 
and civil strife ; will her moral stamina, bred from the heroism 
of an heroic past, stand the strain, the tremendous strain of the 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 437 

new conditions? Will she assimilate the strange new peoples — 
strange in thought and life and morals — coming to her borders ? 
Will she eradicate their vices like the strong body of a healthy 
constitution throwing off disease ; or will she be poisoned by 
the toxins of vicious traits inherited from centuries of vicious 
living? Will she remake the men, regenerate the aliens, com- 
ing to her hearth fire ; or will they drag her down to their de- 
genera c}' ? Above all, will she stand the strain, the tremendous 
strain, of prosperity, and the corruption that is attendant on 
prosperity ? Qiiien sabe ? Let him answer who can ; and the 
question is best answered by watching the criminal calendar. 
(Is the percentage of convictions as certain and relentless as 
under the old regime ? What manner of crimes is growing 
up in the land ?) And the question may be answered, too, by 
watching whether the press and platform and pulpit stand as 
everlastingly and relentlessly for sharp dcmarkation between 
right and wrong, for the sharp demarkation between truth, i)lain 
truth, and intentional mendacity, as under the regime of the old 
hard days. When political life grows corrupt, is it now cleansed, 
or condoned ? Let each Canadian answer for himself. If the 
altar fires of Canada's ideals again burn low, again she will lag 
in the progress of the world's great builders. 



INDEX 



Note. In all names of persons, names have been spelled as signed by the person; in 
names of places, as written in early state documents. In all other cases the rulings of the 
Canadian Geographic Board have been followed, with the exception of Moutagnais, which 
is given Mo)itaignais, I'adoitsac as Tadoiissac, Saiii as Sault, Louislwitrg as Louislnirg, 
Deiiys as Denis. 



Abenaki Indians, 171, 192, 193 
Abercrombie, 252, 256, 258, 259 
Acadia, 40, 41, 61, 64, 65, 69, 70, 192, 

196, 197, 204, 2r4, 216, 220, 231, 233, 

^35' 236, 241 
Agona, 19 
Alaska, 321, 324 
Albanel, Father, 143, 144 
Albany, 97, 153, 159, 160, 162 
Alberta, 297, 436 
Alexander, 208 
Alexander, Sir William, 61 
Algonquin Indians, 52, 103, 104, 105, 

106, loS 
Allen, Ethan, 298 
Allumette Island, 51, 52 
Alymer, 50 
Amherst, 236 
Amherst, Sir Jeffrey, 252, 253, 256, 

261, 268, 274, 277 
Andre, Mademoiselle, 122 
Annapolis, 200, 201, 215, 231 
Annapolis ]>asin, 35, 37, 44, 61, 65, 67, 

69, 177 
Anticosti Island, 12, 134, 177 
Appleton, Colonel, 197 
Argall, Samuel, 43, 44, 6i 
Arnold, IJenedict, 300-309 
Astor, John Jacob, 294, 330, 2)^?-, 
Astoria, 333, 379 
Athabasca, 324, 327, 390, 391, 39S, 399, 

401, 402 
Aubert, 7 

Aubry, 34, 35, 36, 44, 236 
Aulneau, 208, 209 

Bad River, 329, 330 

Balboa, 6 

Barclay, Captain, 363, 364 



Barre, Charlotte, 78 

Basin of Mines, 195 

Bascjues, 44, 45, 46, 58 

Basset, 195 

Bathurst, Lord, 411 

Bay of Islands, 10 

Bayly, Governor, 144, 187 

Beaubassin, 195, 236 

Beauharnois, Governor, 206 

Beaujeu, 141 

Beauport, 269, 275 

Beaupre, 19 

Beausejour, 231, 236 

Beaver Dams, 362 

Bella Coola, 330 

Belle Isle, 10, 19, 20 

Belle Isle Straits, 10, 12 

Bering, Vitus, 212 

Berkeley, Admiral, 335, 336 

Biard, Father, 41, 42, 44 

Biencourt, 34, 40, 42, 61 

Bigot, Intendant, 241-247, 274 

Black Rock, 369 

Blackwater River, 330 

Blanc Sablon, 10, 11, 12 

Bloody Brook, 202 

Boerstler, Lieutenant, 360, 362 

Bona Vista, 5, 8 

Bonaventure, 195 

Boscavven, 226, 234, 252, 256 

Boston, 66, 194, 195, 203, 216 

Boucher, 394 

Bougainville, 243, 261, 270 

Bouquet, 287, 288, 289, 290 

Bourgeoys, Marguerite, 117 

Bourlamaque, 243, 262 

Braddock, General, 226-230 

Bradstreet, General, 260, 287, 288 

Brant, Joseph, 310, 315 



439 



440 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Bras d'Or Lakes, 7 

Brebeuf, Jean de, 71, 80, 82-90 

Bridgar, 149 

British Columbia, 323, 436 

Brock, Isaac, 338-34S, 363 

Brockville, 349 

Brown, George, 371, 434 

Brule, Etienne, 48, 50, 52-57, 83, 127 

Buffalo, 369, 371 

Buller, Charles, 432 

IJurlington Heights, 365, 372 

liurton. Colonel, 272 

Cabot, John, 3-7, 26, 61 

Cabot, Sebastian, 5 

Cadillac, La Motte, 119, 124, 163, 165, 

205 
Caldwell, General, 412 
California, 319, 408 
Cameron, Duncan, 381), 391 
Campbell t'ajitain, 285 
Cape Breton, 5 6, 7, 38, 43, 61, 62, 65, 

124, 204, 214, 215 
Cape Cod, 30, 37 
Cape Diamond, 13, 19, 45, 80 
Cape Rouge, 19, 22 
Cape Sable, 6r, 65 
Garden, Major, 299 
Carillon, 50 
Carleton, 62 
Carleton, Sir Guy, 279, 280, 281, 29S- 

312 
Carterett, George, 114 
Cartier, Jacques, 7-22, 33, 40, 45, 77, 79 
Casson, Dollier de, 121, 126, 128, 130 
Castle Lsland, 10 
("atalina, 8 

("haleur. Bay of, 11, 188 
Chambly, F'ort, 125 
Champlain, Lake, 47, 203, 237, 242, 298, 

299, 378 
Champlain, Madame, 57 
Champlain, Samuel, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 

39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48-60, 77, 80, 82, 

83 "5 
Chandler, 356, 357, 359 

Charity Island, 92 

Charles II, 114, 115 

Charlottetown, 314 

(Charlton Island, 156, 160, 161 

Charnisay, Sieur d'Aulnay de, 65-69 

Chasteaufort, Marc Antoine de, 115 

Chateau liay 10 

Chateauguay River, 368, 369 

Chatham, 279 

Chats Rapids, 51 



Chaudiere Falls, 50, 104 

Chauncey, 349, 351-356, 366 

Chenier, Dr., 429, 431 

Chicago Portage, 133 

Chignecto, 231 

Chippewa, 371, 372, 373 

Chippewyan, Fort, 325, 402 

Chomedey, Paul de, 75 

Christian Islands, 92, 99 

Chrysler's Farm, 367 

Church, Ben, 195 

Churchill, Fort, 297, 318, 319 

Clark, Lieutenant, 175 

Clark, William, 310, 330 

Clarke, John, 391, 398, 401, 402 

Cobequid, 236 

Cocking, Matthew, 297 

Coffin, John, 306 

Colborne, Sir John, 431 

Columbia River, 321-323 

Columbus, 3, 6 

Contrecccur, 230 

Cook, James, 263, 319-321 

Coppermine River, 296 

Cornwallis, Edward, 221, 232 

Cortereal, Caspar, 6 

Courcelle, Governor, 125, 126 

Craig, Governor, 336, 337 

Cree Indians, 103, no, 112, 208, 210, 

386 
Crcvecoeur, Fort, 138, 139 
Cumberland, 236 

Dablon, 132 

D'Aillelioust, Louis, 78, 79, 115, 119, 

120, 172 
Dalzell, 285 

Daniel, Father, 27, 84, 87 
D'Anville, Duke, 220 
D'Argenson, no, 115 
Dauversiere, Jerome le Koyer de la, 

74' 117 
D'Avaugour, in, n5 
Davis, 30 

Davost, Father, 84 
Dearborn, General, 353, 356 
Deerfield, 193, 195 
De Mezy, 1 1 5 

De Monts, Sieur, 33-37. 4°, 44- 4 5' 4^^ 
Denis, 7 
Denonville, Marquis de, 163, 164, 167, 

168 
De Salaberry, 368, 369 
Detroit, 93, 205, 276, 286, 291, 310, 33S, 

339, 340, 363 
De Troyes, Chevalier, 157, 158, 159, 160 



INDEX 



441 



Dieskau, l>aron, 226, 237, 240 

Digge's Island, i 54 

Diiiwiddie, (joveinor, 224 

Dobbs, Captain, 376 

Dochet Island, 35 

Dog Rib Indians, 326 

Dollaid, Adam, 107, loS, 109, 110 

I3on Quadra, 322 

Donnacona, 13, 18, 19 

Douglas, Fort, 386, 387, 390, 391, 393, 

395' 397, 
Douglas, Governor, 408 
Drake, Sir Francis, 26, 27 
Drew, 426 
Drucourt, 2:53 
Drummond, Sir Gordon, 369, 370, 372, 

374, 376, 377. 37S 
Du Chene, Lake, 50, 105 
Duchambon, 219 
Ducharme, 362 
Duluth, 112, 146, 163, 165 
Duluth. Daniel G., 118, 124, 205 
Duncombe, Dr., 424, 425 
Dupuis, Major, cjS 
Duquesne, P"ort, 224, 226, 227, 22S, 252, 

260 
Duquesne, Marquis, 224 
Durell, 261 

Durham, Lord, 431, 432 
Duval, 46 

Fgg Islands, 203 

Elizabeth, Queen, 26 

Ellliott, Lieutenant, 343, 344 

Eric, Earl, i 

Erie, Fort, 344, 376, 377 

Erie, Lake, 129, 130, 131, 137, 341, 349 

Ermatinger, Judge, 424 

Etherington, Major, 2S6 

Evans, 344 

Fidler, Peter, 3S9 

Findley, 295 

Fitzgibbons, 357, 359, 360, 362, 373, 

421, 422 
Fleury, 42, 43 
Fontaine, Marguerite, 170 
F'ontaine, Sieur Pierre, 1 70 
Forbes, John, 260 
Forsyth, 353 
Franklin, Benjamin, 309 
Eraser, Simon, 330, 331, 332 
Eraser River, 336, 331, 332 
French Bay, 35 
French River, 53, 54 
Frenchman's Bay, 42 



Freneuse, Madame, 195, 196, 202 

Frobisher, Martin, 25, 30 

Frontenac, Count, 132, 134, 135, 156, 

140, 150, 167, 171, 176-188 
Frontenac, Fort, 135, 136, 137, 141, 163, 

178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 252, 260 
P\indy, Bay of, 35, 42, 62, 63, 66 
Funk Island, 9 

Galet, 170 

Galinee, 129, 130, 131 

Garry, Nicholas, 406 

Gaspe, II, 12, 32, 124, 177, 256 

Gatineau, 50, 104 

George, Fort, 342, 3^4, 348, 355, 356, 

360, Z12 
George, Lake, 240, 242 
Georgian Bay, 54, 83, 84, 92 
Gibraltar, Fort, 386, 387 
Gilbert, Sir Humph ley, 25-29 
Gilbert du Thet, 42, 43 
Gillam, Ben, 148, 149, 150 
Gillam, Captain, 144, 145, 149 
Gillam, Zechariah, 113 
Gillam's Island, 148 
Girod, 428, 431 
Gladwin, 2S4 
Glen Rae, Dr., 407, 408 
Glenn, 174 
Goat Island, 44 
Gore, Colonel, 429 
Gorham. 24S 

Gourlay, Robert, 415, 416, 417 
Grand Pre, 231, 236, 241 
Grant, Cuthbert, 390, 391, 394 
Gray, Robert, 321-323 
Great Lakes, 53, 71 
Green, Henry, 31 
Green, Piper, 3S7 
Green Bay, 93, 103, 105, 132 
Greenland, i, 2, 5 
Griguet, 9 
Grimmington, 154 
Groseillers, Chouart, 150,151,1^2, 1 1;3, 

156 
Groseillers, Medard Chouart de, 85, 

98-115, 118, 144-153 
Gudrid, i, 2, 3 
Gulf of Me.xico, 140, 141 
( ndf .Stream, 6 
Gull Island, 9 

Ha-Ha Bay, 9 

Haldimand, General, 311, 312 
Halifax, 231, 232, 233, 248, 317 
Hamilton, 129 



442 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Hampton, General, 367, 368 

Harrison, General, 363 

Harvey, 357, 358 

Haverhill, 198 

Hayes River, 148, 385 

Head, Sir Francis, 421 

Hearne, Samuel, 296, 297, 318, 319 

Hebert, Louis, 44, 57 

Hebert, Madame, 79 

Hendry, Anthony, 243, 295 

Hennepin, Louis, 137, 138, 139 

Henry, Alexander, 286, 287 

Henry, John, 337 

Henry VH, 3, 4 

Hertel, Fran9ois, 174, 175 

Hill, Jack, 202, 203 

Hochelaga, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18 

Holmes, Admiral, 269 

Horton, 236 

Hudson, Henry, 30, 31, 32, 49 

Hudson Bay, 30, 32, 103, no, 113, 115, 

134, 143, 144, 146, 148, 161, 162, 164, 

191, 204, 318, 406 
Hudson River, 30 
Hudson Straits, 30 
Hull, 338-340 
Hume, 420 
Hume, Captain, 154 
Huron, Lake, 54 

Huron Indians, 46, 48, 52-57, 82-93, 9*^' 
1 08- 1 ID, 126 

Iberville, 157-163, 165, 172, 174, 183, 
184, 185, 186, 188 

Iberville, Chateaugnay, 183 

Iceland, 3 

liionateria, 84 

Illinois Indians, 133, 13S, 163, 189 
.Illinois River, 133, 139 

Iroquois Indians, 46-48, 52-57, 78, 79, 
86, 87-102, 103, 105, 106, 108, no, 
125, 128-130, 135, 162-171, 183,204 

Island of Orleans, 13 

Isle of Demons, 10, 20, 21 

Jacqueline, Frances Marie, 67 

Jalobert, Captain, 12, ig 

James Bay, 30, 31, 113, 144, 15S 

Jogues, Father, 85, 94, 97 

Johnson, William, 237, 240 

Jolliet, Louis, n8, 130, 132-134, 139, 

146, 152, 177, 205 
Jolliet, Madame, 1S3 
Joseph, Louis, 243 
Juett, 30 
Jumonville, 225 



Kaministiquia, 139, 143, 205, 207 
Kidd, Captain, 150 
King's Cove, 5 

Kingston, 135, 260, 354. 370, 427 
Kirke, Uavid, 58, 60, 03 
Kirke, Gervaise, 58, 63 
Kirke, Louis, 58, 63 
Kirke, Mary, 114, 115, 145 
Kirke, Thomas, 58, 63 

La Barre, 140, 150, 163, 168 

La Bonte, 170 

Labrador, i, 6, 7, 10, 30, 46, 121, 143, 

147 
Lachine Rapids, 17 
La Fleche, Father, 41 
La Forest, 146 
Lake of the Woods, 112 
Lalemant, 88, 89, 90 
La Martiniere, 153 
La Monnerie, Lieutenant de, 171 
Lamont, 19 

La Motte, Admiral, 226 
La Naudiere, M. de, 171 
Langdale, 287 

La Peltrie, Madame de, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78 
I^a I'erouse, Admiral, 318, 319 
La Place, 298 
La Reine, Fort de, 211 
La Roche, Marquis de, 23-25, 40 
La Salle, Robert Cavalier de, 19, 11 8, 

128-142, 146, 205 
La Saussaye, 42 
La Tour, Charles de, 61-69 
La Tour, Claude de, 63, 64 
La Tour, Madame Charles de, 67-69 
Laurentian Hills, 50 
Lauson, 75 

Lauzon, Jean de, 98, 115 
Lauzon-Charny, Charles de, 115 
Laval, Bishop, 122 
La Verendrye, Jean, 207-209 
La Verendrye, Jemmeraie, 206-208 
La Verendrye, Pierre Gauthier, 206-212 
Lawrence, Colonel, 231, 233, 234, 235, 

253 
Le Bers, 172 
Le Breton, Captain, 12 
Le Caron, Joseph, 52, 53 
Le Chesnaye, 146, 150, 157 
Leif, I 

Le Jeune, Pierre, 79, 80, Si, 82 
Le Loutre, Louis Joseph, 213-216, 220, 

231, 232, 241, 278 
Le Moyne, Charles, 108, n8, 126, 146, 

157 



INDEX 



443 



Le Moyne, Father, 98 

Le Moyne, Maricouit, 157-161, 172, 

173, 179, 182 
Le Moyne, Ste. Helene, 157-159, 172, 

173, 179, 182 
Le Moyne, Serigny, 183, 184, 187 
Lery, Baron de, 7, 24 
Lescarbot, Marc, 37-40, 63 
Leslie, Captain, 286 
Levis, Chevalier de, 243, 245, 246, 249, 

250, 267, 274 
Lewis, 330 

Lewiston, 342-348, 369 
Long Sault Rapids, 108 
Long Saut, 50 
Lorette mission, 93 
Loudon, Earl, 243, 248, 252 
Louisburg, 215, 216, 218, 220, 234, 241, 

248, 252 
Louisiana, 140 
Lount, 424, 427 
Lundy's Lane, 373-375 

Macdonald, John A., 427, 435 
MacDonell, Miles, 381, 385, 38S-390, 

396, 397 
McDonnell, 368, 369 
M'Donnell, 350 
Macdonnell, Major, 346, 348 
MacGillivray, William, 380. 381 
Mackay, Alexander, 327, 328 
McKay, Tom, 407 
MacKenzie, Alexander, 324-331, 380, 

398 
MacKenzie, Roderick, 325, 327 
MacKenzie, William Lyon, 420-426 
MacKenzie River, 327 
Mackinac, Straits of, 105 
McLean, Hector, 300, 387 
McLoughlin, Dr. John, 407, 409 
McNab, Allan, 422, 424-426 
Magellan, 6 

Maine, 42, 192, 204, 310 
Maisonneuve, Sieur de, 75-79, 108, 118, 

119, 120 
Maitland, Sir Peregrine, 415, 417, 418 
Mance, Jeanne, 76, 78, 117 
Mandanes, 21 1 
Manitoba, 436 
Manitoulin Island, 84, 93 
Maquinna, 322 
March, Colonel, 196, 197 
Marco Polo, 3 

Marie of the Incarnation, 72-74 
Marquette, Father, 118, 132, 133, 134, 

205 



Martin, Abraham, 44, 57 

Mascarene, Paul, 201, 202, 215 

Mascoutin Indians, 132, 138 

Massacre Island, 209 

Masse, Father, 42 

Matonabbee, 296, 297, 319 

Mattawa, 52 

Matthews, 414, 415, 427 

Meares, 321 

Meigs, Fort, 363 

Membertou, Henry, 38, 39, 41, 42 

Meneval, 177 

Mercer, Colonel, 247 

Miami, Fort, 284 

Michigan, 339 

Michigan, Lake, 103, 133 

Michilimackinac, 137, 276, 286, 310, 339, 

379 
Micmac Indians, 220 
Midland, 54 
Mingan, 12 
Minnesota, 205, 20S 
Miquelon, 204, 277 
Miramichi Indians, 10, 11, 256 
Mississippi River, 106, 128, 133, 139, 

141 
Missouri River, 133, 139, 211 
Mohawk River, 127 
Monckton, 231, 234-235, 261, 265, 270 
Monro, Lieutenant, 250 
Montaignais Indians, 6, 10, 46, 81, 82 
Montana, 212 
Montcalm, Marquis de, 44, 243-250, 

257, 265-269, 271, 273 
Montgomery, Richard, 300-308 
Montmagny, Charles de, 71, 72, 74, 

76-78, 115 
Montmorency, 13 
Montreal, 16, 48-51, 72-7S, 94, 107, 108, 

117, 120, 165, 191, 267, 274-302,340, 

367, 400, 427, 428 
Moon, Captain, 162 
Moose Factory, 153, 157, 158 
Moraviantown, 365, 366 
Mount Desert, 42, 44 
Mount Royal, 49, 78 
Murray, Lord John, 234, 235, 258, 261, 

270, 274, 277-280 
Muskoka, 84 

Nelson, Dr., 429, 430, 432 
Nelson, Port, 152, 153, 183, 185, 384 
Nelson River, 148, 385 
Nepigon, 206 

New Brunswick, 10, 62-65, 204, 220, 
312, 313, 434 



444 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



New Caledonia, 406, 407 
New Hampshire, 172 
New York, 97, 165, 221 
Newfoundland, 5-7, 9, 10, 12, 19, 23, 

30, 183, 184, 204 
Niagara, 129, 267, 316, 340, 351, 369, 

370, 379 
Nicholson, Francis, 19S-203 
Nicolet, Jean, 71, 103, 127 
Nipissing Indians, 51, 53 
Nipissing Lake, 51, 53, 103 
Noel, 19 
Nootka, 320-322 
Norsemen, 2 
Nova Scotia, i, 34, 35, 61, 220, 31 2, 31 7, 

379. 434. 43''^ 

O'Callaghan, 429 

(Jchagach, Chief, 206 

Ochiltree, Lord, 62 

Ogden, 407 

Ogdensburg, 350 

Ohio River, 128, 130, 133, 224, 226, 241 

Olier, Jean Jacques, 75, 76 

Onondaga, Lake, 98 

Onondagas, 55, 98, 99, 100 

Ontario, 84, 127, 312,315, 316, 338, 349 

(Jntario, Lake, 54, 57, 127, 129, 134, 3-|i) 

Oregon, 406, 407 

Orleans Island, 13, 76 

Oswego, 247, 250 

Ottawa, 46 

Ottawa Indians, 51 

Ottawa River, 17, 49, 51, 52, 57, 8() 

Papineau, 427-429 

Parliament Hill, 50, 104 

Parry Sound, 54 

Parsnip River, 328 

Passamaquoddy, 195 

Pays d'en Maut, 182 

Peace River, 326, 327 

Pean, Madame, 245 

Peguis, Chief, 392, 393, 395 

Penetang, 54, 83, 85 

Pepperrell, William, 216, 219 

Pepys, Samuel, 153 

Pare, Jan, 130, 132, 152-159 

Perrot, Nicholas, 132, 163 

Perry, 349 

Phips, Sir William, 176-1 78, 182 

Pierre, 80, 81, 82 

Pierre, Fort, 208 

Pike, 353. 354 
Pitt, Fort, 290 
Pittsburg, 224, 228, 260 



Place d'Armes, 79 

Place Royale, 48 

Placentia, 183 

Plenderleath, Major, 358 

I'oncet, Pere, 94, 97 

Pontgrave, 32-38, 42, 45, 71 

Pontiac, 276, 281, 286, 291, 292 

Port Dover, 131 

Port Royal, 35-44, 57.61, 64-70, 114, 

191, 194, 202 
Port Royal Basin, 198 
Port Stanley, 130 
Portland, Me., 171, 175 
Portneuf, 175 

I'outrincourt, Baron de, 34-42 
Powell, 416, 417 
Presqu' Isle, 276, 2S4, 34S, 363 
Preston, Major, 300 
Prevost, Sir George, 349, 370, 376, 378, 

410, 41 1 
Primeau, Louis, 297 
Prince Edward Island, 214, 215, 232, 

256, 312, 314 
Procter, 363, 365, 366 
Puget Sound, 322 

Quebec, 13, 17, 44.45' 5-. 57. 59. 60, 
63, 71-82, 94, 107, 117, 156, 168, 171, 
178-188, 202, 232, 252, 260-275. 276- 
309, 316, 317, 412, 432. 434. 435 

yueenston Heights, 342-347. 35-' 3^0. 
372 

()uesnel, ^^i 

(^)uinte, Bay of, i 27 

(^)uirpon, 9 

Radisson, Pierre Esprit, 95, 96,98-115, 

118, 144-154. 205 
RagLieneau, Father, 91-93. 99, 100 
Rafeigh, Sir Walter, 25, 26, 30 
Ramezay, 271 
Rasle, Pere, 213 
Rat, 164, 165 
Razilli, Isaac, 65 
Red River, 381, 388-392 
Riall, 374 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 57, 58, 65 
Richelieu River, 46, 48, 125, 429 
Richmond, Duke of, 417, 418, 419 
Richmond Ciulf, 30 
Rideau River, 50, 104 
Robertson, Colin, 3S0-383, 390, 391, 

393' 396, 400-403 
Roberval, Marguerite, 20, 21 
Roberval, Sieur de, 18-23, 40 
Rogers, Robert, 242, 276, 281, 285 



INDEX 



445 



Rolph, Dr., 421-425 

Ross, 407 

Rouville, Hertel de, 193, 194, 19S 

Rupert, 32, 153 

Rupert River, 113, 115, 161 

Rupert's Fort, 15.S, 161 

Sable Island, 7, 23, 65, 114, 220 

Sackett's Harbor, 370 

Saguenay, 12, 22, 32, 73, 113 

St. Anne de Beaupre, 120 

St. Anthony, Falls of, 139 

St. Charles, Fort, 208 

St. Charles River, 13, 14, 15, 17, 429, 

430 
St. Denys, 65, 71 
St. Eustache, 430 
St. Francis, Lake, 129 
St. Helen's Island, 49, 77 
St. Ignace, 85, 88, 89, 91 
St. Jean Ba'tiste, 85 
St. John, Fort, 65, 67. 70 
St. John River, 35, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67 
St. John's, 19, 26, 28, 300 
St. Joseph, 85, 87, 88, 284 
St. Joseph Island, 92 
St. Lawrence River, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 

46, 71, 73, 126 
St. Louis, 61, 85, 88, 89, 91, 292 
St. Louis, Lake, 129 
St. Lusson, 132 
St. Malo, 43 

St. Mary's Bay, 34, 36, 236 
St. Peter, Lake, 15, 71 
St. Pierre, 204, 224, 277, 279, 280, 281 
St. Thomas Town, 413 
St. Valliere, Bishop, 122 
Ste. Anne's, 49 

Ste. Croix River, 35, 37, 44, 310 
Ste. Marie Mission, 85-92 
Saint-Castin, Baron de, 175, 195, 197, 

200, 201, 202 
Salmon Falls, 174, 175 
San Francisco, 407, 408 
Sandusky, 276, 313 
Sandwich Islands, 321 
Sargeant, Governor, 1^5, 156, 159, 160 
Saskatchewan, 212, 243, 297, 401, 403, 

Sault Ste. Marie, 106, 132, 378 
Saunders, 261, 269 
Schenectady, 173, 174 
Schuyler, Captain, 176 
Scott, Hercules, 373, 374 
Secord, James, 360 
Secord, Laura, 360-362 



Sedgwick, Major, 70 

Selkirk, 3S5 

Selkirk, Lord, 317, 380, 381, 384, 388, 

390, 396, 397, 398, 400 
Semple, Robert, 390, 392, 393, 394 
Seven Oaks, 394, 399 
Sheaffe, General, 346, 347, 354 
Sherbrooke, Sir John, 412, 417 
Simcoe, Lake, 54, 84, 85 
Simcoe, Lieutenant Governor, 316, 412 
Simpson, Sir George, 406 
Sioux Indians, 103 
Skraelings, i 
Smithsend, 154 
Smyth, 348 
Sorcerer Indians, 51 
Sorel, Dame, 146 
Sorel, Fort, 125 
Stadacona, 13 
Staring Hairs, 53 
Stobo, Robert, 268 
Stony Creek, 357, 358 
Stopford, Major, 300 
Stuart, 331 
Subercase, 197-200 
Superior, Lake, 85, 112 
Suscpiehanna Indians, 54 
Swanton, Vt., 429 
Sylvie, 157 

Tadoussac, 32, 34, 44, 58, 63, 73, 74, 94, 

134, 177 
Talbot, Tom, 413 

Talon, Jean, 123-125, 128, 132, 136, 143 
Tecumseh, 339, 363 
Tessouat, Chief, 51 
Texas, 141 

Thomas, General, 309 
Thompson, David, 332, ^^^ 
Thornstein, i, 2 
Thorwald, i 
Three Rivers, 71, 82, 83, 94, 95, 98, 

107, 113, 124, 206, 277 
Ticonderoga, Fort, 242, 249, 252, 256, 

260, 298 
Tobacco Indians, 85, 93 
Tonty, Henry, 137-14 1 
Toronto, 351, 353, 355, 415, 420, 422, 

423, 432 
Townshend, 261, 265, 270 
Tracy, Marquis de, 125, 126 
Trent River, 54 
Trinity River, 141 
Truro, 236 
Twin Cities, 139 
Twin Mountains Lake, 49 



446 



CANADA: THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH 



Ungava Hay, 30 

Van Egmond, 421, 422, 424 

Van Rensselaer, 342-34S 

Van Shoultz, 427 

Vancouver, George, 319, 321-323 

Vancouver Island, 320-322 

Vaudreuil, Governor de, 193, 197, 243, 

262, 274 
\'aughan, 216 
V^ercheres, Jared of, 19S 
\'ercheres, M. de, 169 
Vercheres, Madame de, 169 
Vergor, 231 
Vermont, 429, 430 
Verrazano, 7 
Vetch, Colonel, 19.S, 201 
Victoria, 409 

Vignau, Nicholas, 49-51, 127 
Vikings, i 
Ville Marie, 78 
Vimont, Father, 73, 77, 78 
Vincent, General, 355, 356, 358, 359 
Vinland, i, 2, 3 



Walker, Sir Hovender, 202, 203 

Warren, 219 

Washington, George, 224, 229, 260, 

310 
Webb, General, 250 
Weir, Lieutenant, 429 
Wetherell, Colonel, 429 
Wilkinson, 367, 36S 
William, Fort, 112, 397, 398, 399 
William of Orange, 165, ]66 
Williams, William, 403 
Winchester, General, 363 
Winder, 356, 357, 358 
Winnipeg, 210, 387, 394 
Winnipeg Lake, 208 
Winthrop, 176 
Wisconsin, 106 
Wisconsin River, 132 
Wolfe, James, 44, 252-257 
Wye River, 85, 88, 89, 92 

Veo, Sir James, 358, 366, 377 
York Fort, 384, 385 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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